Is your organisation outsourcing programming?

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martinig
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Is your organisation outsourcing programming?

Post by martinig »

I have seen a recent survey on this topic. Close to 50% are outsourcing programming. What is the situation for your organisation?
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Kieran Huggins
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Post by Kieran Huggins »

define "outsourcing" - does it include hiring a firm to write custom software for you? What about web apps? It seems to me that should be normal practice
martinig
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Post by martinig »

Yes it means giving to an other organisation the responsibility of programming and not doing it internally. Why do you think it should be normal practice?
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

Under the terms provided thus far hiring a company located down the street to design a site would be considered outsourcing. As far as that goes, that is pretty standard practice for most companies.
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patrikG
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Post by patrikG »

"Oursourcing" as such has been going on ever since humans started trading services. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you mean "offshoring".
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

hiring a company located down the street to design a site would be considered outsourcing.
Under that definition, I'd say that "outsourcing" somebody for your development needs is no different than buying pens and paper. You wouldn't make the pens and paper in-house if you're a marketing firm. It just makes sense to hire somebody else unless you are a large organization.
martinig
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Post by martinig »

I was not meaning offshoring. IBM has subsidiaries in India for instance, but developers there are IBM's employees. it is true that offshoring and outsourcing are often combined as cost seems the main driver for giving away software development activities.

I agree with the fact that you cannot do everything internally like pen and papers, but if you look at the survey results the majority of participants that outsource programming are also programming internally. Only 6% outsource all software developpment. This means that there are some internal skills.
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Christopher
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Post by Christopher »

I think one interesting thing about that survey is that only 1% of those surveyed said that they "do not use custom-made applications." Good news for consultants.
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Kieran Huggins
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Post by Kieran Huggins »

I'm still unclear...

I use phpBB even though I could write my own forum app.. is that outsourcing?

What if I paid a license fee for it?

What if I paid NSG to write it for me?

At what point does it become "outsourcing"?
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mikeq
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Post by mikeq »

Outsourcing,

Generally if a companies IT department decides to use another company and solely that company to perform a function that would normally be undertaken in-house.

We are not talking one-off application developments (a web site for instance), but the whole development function is carried out by an outside company, whereas previously it was carried out by an in-house team.

Another word for it would be sub-contracting.

The company then no longer has any in-house development resource, that is outsourcing.
thinkseo123
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Post by thinkseo123 »

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That is right, a lot of web development companies outsource programmers especially from third world countries who has skilled programmers at affrodable rate. Also, most programmers prefer to operate by themselves rather than work under an employer.
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onion2k
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Post by onion2k »

Kieran Huggins wrote:define "outsourcing" - does it include hiring a firm to write custom software for you? What about web apps? It seems to me that should be normal practice
For small companies, sure. I really don't understand why companies who want a large scale site outsource though. It must be cheaper to recruit a small team than to go to an outside company. Some of the people I write sites for pay many times more than my salary for their sites, and get about 3 months of my time for it. That's crazy surely.
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Post by timvw »

Would we define the situation where a company hires consultants to staff it's it-department as outsourcing too?
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Trenchant
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Post by Trenchant »

Most of my business is based off of outsourcing. I'm a student approaching university running a web developement business. I act as the "middle person" and put together websites for local business's. I do all the coding, html, content for client websites but I outsource all designs to a developement firm in India. It's far less expensive and the work that comes back I normally find to be a higher quality because of their work standards.

Because I outsource to India aswell almost all of my overhead costs are gone. I can charge rock bottom prices and make a killing. I've gotten many compliments for making more affordable websites that are done to higher quality then major design firms. It's all because I can chop down my design costs from $400-$800 to as low as $75
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