Gary Neilson
"Overseas programmers could be a big problem if not properly managed..."

Leading Software Development Destinations

With the growth of global Software Development sector, progressively more countries offer offshore R&D, software development, coding and Software Testing services. Nowadays there are some world's leaders which are India, China, Israel, Ireland, the Philippines, Canada and Eastern Europe.

India was the first to offer Software Development services to USA and other world's developed countries. Due to this, its main competitive advantages are well-developed infrastructure and experience. By now, there have been 24 CMMI Level 5 companies out of 49 over the world, and one of the biggest in the world amount of ISO certified companies. English is official language that adds value to Indian Software Development services. Indian government encourages outsourcing sector paying much attention to IT education. There are more than 300,000 computer engineering graduates annually.

The most important factor providing inconvenience of work with Indian companies is significant time-zone difference and geographical distance. Cultural gap provides communication problems in spite of good English knowledge. Besides, due to fast growing demand for Indian Software Development services there are relatively high prices now. Indian outsourcing industry is specialized at full spectrum services.

China is another popular Software Development destination. Chinese prices for software development services are lower than in India, and great number of skilled labor is available. Chinese Government supports IT sector as well as English learning in the country.

Like India, China is situated geographically far from the major Customers locations (the US and Western Europe) with significant time-zone and cultural difference. That is why China's IT sector is fuelled by Japanese Customers. In addition, China lacks enforcement of intellectual rights. Chinese outsourcing specialization is programming.

Israel has a pool of highly skilled professionals (about 30.000) able to implement sophisticated Software Projects. Thus, Israeli Services are relatively expensive. Many multinational corporations including Microsoft, IBM, Motorola, HP, Intel and others set up their offshore offices in the country. Time-zone difference is not so big, especially with Western Europe. However, outsourcing to Israel is complicated by political instability in the country and permanent war conflicts in the Middle East. Israeli outsourcing companies specialize mostly on programming and R&D.

Ireland is another old-timer of Software Development sector. It has been the center of Software Product development for distribution throughout Europe for a while. Mature software development industry, highly-qualified Programmers and governmental support make Ireland attractive but expensive outsourcing destination. Its specialization covers programming and R&D as well as internationalization and localization of software programs.

The Philippines is a world-recognized outsourcing service provider. Good English skills are main advantage of the country providing the Philippines' leadership in call center outsourcing. The country has high-quality IT education with average 10.000 programming professionals graduating annually, but outsourcing sector is slowed down by weak organization and infrastructure of Software Development industry, lack of industry certifications and governmental support. The Philippines specializes in programming, R&D, data entry, Software Testing, and customer support.

Canada is the least risky and the most familiar for the US, with time-zone and geographical proximity as well as similarity of business culture and legislation system. There is strong enforcement of intellectual rights, and English is one of the two official languages. Salaries of Canadian developers are only 20% lower than those in the USA, so Canadian outsourcing companies offer high prices for their services. Although Canada lags India in number of IT labor force, its personnel is highly-qualified and specializes in sophisticated Software Projects development and R&D.

Eastern Europe (Russia, Belarus, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine) is one of the new Software Development destinations. Great number of high-quality IT professionals is available throughout the huge territory of the former USSR. Good education and powerful IT infrastructure are the legacy of the Soviet Union. Today Eastern Europe is one of the most attractive Software Development destinations due to its cultural, time-zone and geographical proximity to Western Europe, low prices and high quality. Progressively more companies gain CMMI and ISO certificates, and project management methodologies are widely used. Most companies specialize in software development and R&D.

To top the list of Software Development leaders, the region still has to improve its copyright enforcement and provide intellectual property defence.

There are a lot of other emerging and developing Software Development destinations with their strengths and weaknesses. The only one general rule reads that price is in inverse proportion to risks, however low price does not always mean low quality.

Published on 7/22/2007