Why Take Information Technology Offshore?
Information Technology (IT), the study of design, implementation, support, development, and data management of computer-based information systems, is constantly evolving. IT specialists are developing and implementing new ways of converting, storing, protecting, processing, transmitting, and retrieving data. Many U.S. based companies are finding it challenging to maintain margins and reduce the costs of product development and Information Technologies operations. By leveraging offshore resources these companies are given the opportunity to dramatically reduce their expenses by employing highly educated, well trained and experienced employees in low cost markets. With extremely high talent markets emerging in India and China, many of the larger technology companies, such as IBM, HP, and Connecticut based United Technologies are outsourcing application development and mainframe maintenance offshore. (Overby, 2003)
Doucette (2003), the Chief Information Officer of United Technologies said, “I was doing this when you didn’t want to be doing this.” David Wood, Otis’s director of systems development says it was worth every penny for the efficiency, cost effectiveness, and productivity gains. “For us it’s just a better way to do things.” Wood (2003) says.
Why would anyone think that this is unusual? In fact the offshore delivery of infrastructure, network and desk support management to server maintenance is becoming more main-stream. The total market for remote management services is anywhere from $80 billion to $120 billion per year. (Overby, 2008) Currently, large global outsourcing is derived from services delivered from a ...