Offshore software development

It is not quite correct to call programming for external client “offshore”. There is an exacter but less frequently used term “contract programming”, as contracts can be obtained also inside the country not only abroad. The equivalent term “outsourcing” is broader in its meaning because refers to all business-processes in general. There is one more close in its meaning but vague term “external supplier of services”. It is common practice nowadays to distinguish two directions: AD (application development), i.e. development of programs and solutions, IT-consulting and BPO (business process outsourcing), services of business-processes outsourcing. The term BPO may cover anything: external customer support, call-centers, bookkeeping, documents control and similar tasks. For instance, in recent years the USA has been experiencing the outsourcing of clinical recording: instead of registering in the hospitals clinical recordings were kept in the English-speaking India.

Crisis in the developed countries made plenty of major IT-consumers turn to the developing ones, above all to India, in search for saving. The world industry of computer software has shown 20-50% grow rates for the recent four years. The biggest Indian outsourcers Infosys, Tata and Wipro have a turnover about 1 bl dollars each. In general the volume of contract programming market accounted for 8,9 bl dollars for the latest reporting period, and is expected to exceed 11 bl dollars in this fiscal year. In the development of outsourcing India is followed by many countries, one of the most promising is Russia. In spite of the fact that Russian developers have been working on this market actively and for a long time, Russian profits and volumes are far behind Indian ones. According to the June survey of the IT Market Study, the volume of the Russian market of export-oriented programming amounts up to $752 ml in 2004 and $980 ml in 2005. However theEPAM System is estimating Russia’s participation in the world outsourcing process as one of the leading ones, among Indian, Chinese and Philippine, calling in the largest region of outsourcing in Eastern Europe.