Software development outsourcing has proven to be a huge success for many companies globally. A highly experienced and dedicated team or team extension can be a perfect approach for both new start-up project or a ready-to-go product. Cost optimization is regarded as one of the key benefits of software development outsourcing. Other advantages are; one can name the team of professionals, flexibility, accessibility, time savings, focused strategy plus the fact that managing outsourced software development is simplified by cloud technology and project management tools.
Top Outsourcing Destinations of 2018
As highlighted by several sources, Ukraine in Europe, Poland in Central Europe, Argentina in South America, and India in Asia emerge as the top outsourcing countries. Let’s go through the basic criteria that unveil the general extent of strong and weak points associated with each country:
1. The technical education level of the resources
2. Proficiency in software development/ Software developers ranking
3. Location and time zones
4. Communication skills
5. Project complexity-related experience
6. Resources availability and tech competency diversity
The Technical Education Level of the Resources
Ukraine
Ukraine boasts of a strong technical education with several highly qualifies experts graduating yearly. In 2017 alone, there were over 40,000 IT graduates, in contrast to the 30,000 in 2016.
Ukraine software developers and companies have a good command of Big Data & AI, mobile development, and cryptocurrency projects. Another distinct aspect of the destination is the existing number of senior developers over middle and junior software experts. Ukraine is one of the leading countries to outsource software development with Front-end skills, Java, Ruby and PHP being well-established fields with several successful web products.
Argentina
There has been nationwide involvement by the Argentina government to further grow the talent pool for software development by investing a lot in schooling. Statistics point to 70% of university students combining studies with work and readily available competent staff in any specialty. Argentina’s software outsourcing companies are experienced with Software and Mobile Development, Cloud Computing and DevOps.
India
Owing to historical implications, India provides a western style of education. Besides the low literacy levels in India, more focus is being made on math-related studies that aid the development of technology. It is one of the best countries for both native and hybrid application development. However, India is new too but actively integrating machine learning, GIS, AI, and Blockchain technologies.
Poland
Poland’s IT education is highly rated attracting students from all over Europe. It emerged top in the popularity rank with graduates reaching 15,000 in 2013. Poland is outstanding at high QA plus usability standards. Poland has a rich pool of offshore programmers in PHP, Python, Java, .NET and Ruby with PHP being the most used language. Reviews from clients reveal the software engineers from Poland show a good work ethic and little cultural differences.
Software developers ranking
India has always stood out as a leading outsourcing destination for a while. However, according to the recent developers ranking, we have seen a dramatic shift towards Eastern and Central Europe. Poland and Ukraine are steps closer to top positions according to HackerRank – a platform rating engineering skills by their coding skills.
Location and Time zone differences
Are time zone differences really a barrier in our connected world? That question always arises when cooperating with an outsourcing model. An outsourcing firm usually offers a management team easing your communication with developers and engineers.
Communication skills
Naturally, English is a universal language of the IT sector. English proficiency also varies in the regions based on country and profession. The EF FPI is a straightforward indicator of how fluent a country speaks English. Last updated in 2017, the countries in question score as highlighted:
1. Poland – 11
2. Argentina – 25
3. India – 27
4. Ukraine – 47
Project complexity experience
India has one of the largest pools of IT and software specialists on the market. India’s urban population is highly educated with good experience in offering IT services. The average hourly rate in India for a software developer is low. Nonetheless, if you yearn for, you should opt for other countries.
Ukraine was named an Offshoring Destination of the Year in 2017 by the Global Sourcing Association UK. The companies from the USA outsource around 80% of IT projects to Ukraine. Crysberry report names Ukraine as number 1 in C++ and Unity3d, 2nd in Magento, JS, and Scala, and 3rd in Ruby, Python, Node.js, and ASP.NET by the number of developers globally.
Poland being a member of EU follows similar data protection laws and regulations as the Union. This is beneficial especially for web development projects and companies normally outsource to Poland for UI-linked jobs, front-end, and back-end development.
Argentina has a robust telecom network that is great for internet startups. Negotiation, however, has been reviewed as a challenge.
Resources availability and tech competency diversity
Ukraine boasts of about 100,000 IT experts with more than 60% in outsourcing with the figures expected to double by 2020. It tops in the number of C++ and Unity3D software developers. Others are highly skilled in JavaScript, Scala, Magento, PHP, Node.js, Ruby, ASP.NET, Python and Front-End development.
InfoShare highlights that Poland offers about 250,000 software engineers with 20% in outsourcing with superior Java, Python, and Ruby expertise.
Outsourcing market in India is concentrated on C/C++, Java and web development. The field has around 3million developers with the number on the rise due to growing interest in AI, Machine Learning and robotics.
In Argentina, about 100,000 tech experts graduate from the university annually. Many of the developers are accomplished in PHP, JavaScript, C, Data science and .NET.
Cultural Differences. Do they matter?
You will almost definitely experience some cultural differences when outsourcing software development to a nearshore or offshore company. Getting to understand the outsourcing partner’s culture is important to help you cope with the differences. Assigning resources for a project isn’t just about crude information, but also communicating your needs and having them heard by a partner organization that can satisfy your requirements. There are more and less appealing factors with respect to each destination.
Author of the Article is Relevant Software