Offshore software development is not only gaining ground but also has become the best software development practice among the US and European high tech independent software vendors.
Offshore software development models have increasingly given low cost competitive advantage to the high tech enterprises and helped them build robust software solutions.
It is usually preferred when an enterprise has a clear software road-map which details technical requirements and have clear picture about the specific tasks of a software.
As offshore software development involves remote collaboration and communication between the clients and the offshore service providers, regular interaction is key to a successful software development.
Companies across the US and European countries usually have to deal with time zone factor for effective communication especially if it prefers to build software with agile models.
Types of Offshore Software Development Models Basically, there are two offshore software development models.
The first model requires building an offshore captive centers in the select country.
The second model is off-shoring outsourcing model which requires taking offshore services to built a software application.
Building Offshore Development Captive Units In this model an enterprise will set up a captive unit in the select country.
What this means is the enterprise will recruit staff, build its own infrastructure and manage day to day operations using resources and skills of the country to attain low cost advantages.
Enterprises that have long term IT plans and projects lined up for next several years usually prefer this model as it makes a lot of sense to have their own captive units and manage day to day development activities using low cost highly skilled resources combined with their management style.
In a nutshell a captive unit can serve the purpose of incremental development needs of an enterprise.
Offshore Software Development Outsourcing In this model an enterprise will partner with an offshore service provider to built a specific product or an application.
This model is usually preferred when an enterprise wants to build a specific product or an application to serve specific needs and the application development life time is limited.
Unlike the first model where the IT needs are incremental in nature, offshore outsourcing models facilitates short term projects and helps enterprises build short term applications at low cost.
Apart from these models, other model which is on spotlight today is cloud services model which facilitates pay as you go facility thus helping companies save cost by availing only the required functionality rather than building a robust set up.