Offshore Software Development - Just a Keyword or a Service?

As the name suggests, when a software is developed by a company of different country (from a separate continent in particular) it is known as offshore software development. This process of software development is also known as outsourcing of software development.

The companies who develop such software are known as offshore software development solutions providers. Such companies are numerous. One can search in Google and would be flooded by thousands of companies claiming to be the best or most professionals, some offering development at low cost & cheap rates. Hiring one company among them would base on many decisions, the criteria of which may vary from person to person and nature of requirement. A small business person probably might not go for the best company perhaps he would look for some affordable solutions. On the contrary, someone looking to build highly sensitive software would look for the best developers.

However, among such search engine listings, there are many non genuine companies that are also listed. The basic disadvantage of going for offshore software development is that you would be completely depending on whatever is being said/displayed by the service provider in their website or you may have come to know after communicating with them. In most situations, you cannot verify the truth of their statements. Taking the advantage of this loop holes, many invalid companies (which are not actually a company at all), bunch of freelancers, purchase a domain, build a website and get them ranked on search engines via search engine optimization. Thus it is very difficult to find a genuine company in such circumstances.

The basic points that you should look for are their contact address. Search the contact address in search engine. If they are genuine, they must have put more information bout themselves in search engines. You may also call them for video conferencing. While speaking with them, you would be in a better position to judge whether they would able to handle your requirement. A genuine offshore software development service provider would always offer testing, which is overlooked by most freelancers who claim themselves as a big company. So always ask whether they provide bug fixing, functional and unit testing. Check for their references and case studies. Going through their case studies you can get an idea of the complexities of the project they might have handled previously.

Offshore software development is more than just a keyword and not all companies may the ability of understanding your requirement. They might have the best developers but what is the use if they cannot understand what exactly you want. So do not ever compromise on your requirement. You may be presented with a different looking solution but the functioning should always meet your needs. Otherwise you may land up with entirely different software that what you were actually looking for.

Mridu Sinha writes about Offshore Software Development, about the companies offering such solutions and the search engine optimizers who are mistreating the important phrase using it as a keyword. Read for more information on offshore software development, and tips of hiring companies for custom software development.