Global Services Survey picks the best 100 service providers
Global Services magazine, a respected asian outsourcing magazine just released its 100 best IT service providers survey. In its fourth year, the survey is intended to help Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and business heads of major outsourcers identify reliable, innovative and tech saavy partners.
Identifying companies from 17 different countries, 43 companies were from the United States and 29 were headquartered in India. The balance of the companies were from China, Malaysia, Russia, Brazil and Mexico.
The survey looked at ten different categories including IT application services, infrastructure, finance and accounting outsourcing, human resources outsourcing and contract centers. Of the top companies in each of the ten categories, four were from the United States, four from India, one from Mexico and one from China.
India is the main hub for global delivery with 57 percent of the employees engaged in delivery centers in India, followed by 18 percent in the United States.
What does this mean? It means that India is a very large player in the global outsourcing industry with its influence growing. I will post the survey when it is released next month.
While SecureNext is not yet on the list, I can say that it is one of our goals to be a category leader in this survey. I look forward to seeing your comments.
Six things I look for when outsourcing a project…
I have many friends that are in the technology industry. Quite often, I am asked what I would look for when looking to outsource a project. In this posting, I am listing the six things I would look for in a software developer when outsourcing my project.
Legal representation in the United States:
I need the piece of mind that comes from knowing I have some type of legal recourse should something go wrong. This comes from being able to enter into a contract with the developer. It doesn’t matter where the work takes place. I just need to have somebody responsible located in the United States.
Quality of their portfolio:
I believe that the past is a very good indicator of the future, especially when software development is concerned. If they have done good work in the past, I can reasonably expect good work on my project.
Experience:
They need to have experience doing the type of project I need them to do. I don’t want to pay my developer to learn on my project. There are enough good developers out there that you should be able to find somebody who has done the type of work you need at the right price.
References:
Always ask to speak with references. You want to work with somebody whose clients speak highly of them. The quality of service that they receive is what you can expect. Integrity in this business is very important. Not everybody has it. You need to trust your developer.
Guarantees:
Does the developer stand behind their work? You want to work with somebody who will go out of their way to make sure you get what you want. It is worth it to spend extra money for a developer who can do this.
Understanding of my business:
Mastery of the technical side of my project is very important. Just as important is their understanding of my business. They should understand what it is they are building is supposed to do and how it will be used by the end user. This is basic but you would be surprised how much this is overlooked.
Please let me know if you have any comments or insights. I will be expanding on this subject in future posts.
Google recommends Securenext ;)
We are not experts with search engine positioning or marketing; at minimum we develop website code / html / page titles to make sure it is search engine friendly so that search engines can index and people can find the websites using keywords they desire.
We never did search engine optimization for our own sites, but last week we were checking our website stats and discovered we are being shown in top 1 position in Google for keyword “India leading Php Company”, even though it is phrase but it means lot to us. We are very happy to see this and it is very natural for google to recommend leaders in PHP development.
Google recommends Securenext, good rite?
Thank you
Saran
Note: It is simple algorithm Google uses and the results fetched on keywords matching and back link text. Google does not endorse or guarantee these results. We are just using this to showcase our skills with search engine optimization.
Top four lessons learned from offshore software development
Offshore outsourcing has been contraversial for as long as it has been around. While many of the complaints may be valid, many failures can be attibuted to inexperience.
I have been managing offshore software development teams for almost ten years now and truth be told, it took me two years to really understand how to do it.
The lessons I have learned have come at a great cost to my former employers. While my projects were never deemed to be outright failures, they often took more time to complete than was originally budgeted cost-wise and time-wise.
Four lessons that I learned that really turned outsourcing around for me were:
Communicate, communicate, communicate….
When giving your programming team written requirements, always review them in a conference call and ask them to restate what you need done in the their own words. The reason that I do this is because there are often many differences that affect the way your requirements are interpreted. Americans and indians often have different ways of doing and saying things. Walking through your requirements will enable you and your programming team to identify the differences early on before damage can be done.
Give your programming team ownership of the project….
The indian programmers I have worked with have had a tremendous work ethic. I worked with one indian project manager early on in my career who was willing to miss his mother’s funeral in order to ensure a timeline was met. Of course, I insisted that he tend to his family matters and would manage through the project. I bring this up to demonstrate the type of ethic I have encountered. To really encourage committment to my projects, I made a conscious effort to express to my programming team just how important they are to the success in the project. This includes not only sharing the disappointments that comes with the project but also the successes.
Never assume that your programming team understands your requirements….
American and Indian cultures are very different. This is reflected in how directions and requirements are interpreted. As a result, it is very important to ensure that everything is understood. This should be done by asking the programming lead to restate your requirements in their own words. Don’t settle for just hearing that your requirements are understood. The reason being in my experience is that some foreign programmers are eager to please and will tell the client what they want to hear.
Document, document, document…
While it is very easy to just pick up the telephone and call, I don’t recommend this. Transcripts and documentation have saved my rear on several occasions. My programming teams also rely upon them for clarification and guidance. Pretty much everything we do on a project here at SecureNext is documented. That includes requirements, emails, and particularly conversations through the use of instant messaging.
Had I known all of the tips listed here when I first started my career in outsourcing, I could have had a lot less stress, fewer sleepless nights and much more time and money.
I hope that this information is helpful to you and I look forward to hearing your comments and feedback. Please feel free to suggest other topics of interest.
As we prepare to celebrate our 5th anniversary
We are preparing to celebrate our 5th anniversary which is commencing on Feb 19th, 2008. When I say celebration it does not mean we are going on party or taking some holidays 
2006 – 2007 was a good year which helped us moving to new facility which gave us quality working environment, adding more new clients, standardizing salary structures, introducing more processes, checking quality and expanding to other markets. Even though we had some attrition rates with the team, it was very less comparing to previous years, but these happens in every company from small to big. So we can call the previous year a good one.
We have lots planned for 2008, in our anniversary function we are looking forward to beta release of Indiashines.com . 
India shines will be portal 100% dedicated for Indian community around the world. We hope you all remember we are the pioneers to launch first Indian based search engine byindia 2 years before, with Indiashines.com we are trying to emulate the same success and make use of the opportunity we missed previously.
More announcements to follow….
Thank you
Saran
3 Reasons why we are growing…
The US is in the m idst of an economic slowdown. We won’t know whether this is a recession or not till some time has passed. We expected the slowdown to impact our growth projections for 2008 and adjusted our forecast downward. Less than one month into the New Year, we are already made to realize the degree of our mistake.
Instead of adding a couple of programmers in the month of March, we are looking to add 15 more programmers before the end of January.
When everybody seems to be curtailing spending, I am curious as to why so many of our clients are undertaking such investments in the midst of such economic insecurity. I asked several of them ‘why now?’ and their responses were as follows, starting with the most popular responses.
Reasons why our clients are investing in their projects at this point is as follow:
1.) Business is good – Some of our clients are seeing growth in their businesses. Almost all of these clients are technology-related and are competing primarily in the B2C space.
2.) They want to improve their competitive position when the market turns around – This is what I hear from those clients that have been traditionally, very conservative with their investments. Many of these same people say that many of their competitors are having a difficult time in this environment.
3.) Cut costs – For those clients who cite cutting costs are asked if they fired anybody in the United States to go overseas, they tell me that they did not rather are shifting business from higher cost US-based development companies to us. I should note that only two clients had this response.
I spoke with a total of 11 clients. I should note that there are also clients of ours that are being hit pretty hard in the slowdow but overall, many are doing quite well. What are you seeing out there? Let us know.
Current openings PHP ,ASP and .NET programmers
We are looking for PHP, ASP and .NET Programmers & Team Leaders
- 3+ years commercial software / Web development experience ( For team leaders position)
- Strong PHP skills.
- Solid UNIX background.
- SQL knowledge and relational database design.
- Mysql specific skills.
- Strong attention to detail.
- Mature, independent, yet receptive to team participation.
- Ability to work in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.
- Excellent interpersonal, communication and organizational skills with the ability to interact effectively with employees at all levels within the organization.
- Troubleshoot technical issues.
- Good understanding of design principles.
New SecureNext practice areas for 2008
SecureNext is now building widgets for FaceBook. We have successfully completed several applications at this point that have been well received by the client as well as the FaceBook community. One such widget is for TriviaFix.
In response to FaceBook, Google released OpenSocial, a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access social networks and update feeds.
SecureNext currently has an experienced team in place to work on FaceBook and Open Social widgets. Contact us for more information.
We are also very close to completing some internal projects using Ruby On Rails (ROR). As a result, we will be able to take on new ROR projects in the very near future.
We only take on work that we are sure we can complete. We also don’t believe in learning on a client’s project. For that reason, we will do at least two projects in a ‘new’ technology before doing such work for clients. This particular strategy has worked out very well for us.
I look forward to receiving your comments and questions. Going forward, we will be updating our blog daily with information that we think will be of interest to you. For that reason, please check back regularly.
More announcements tommorrow….
ANNOUNCEMENT – Changes for 2008
We have many exciting changes in store for 2008. The first of which is that Solution Vault, Inc is changing its name to SecureNext USA, Inc.. Solution Vault and SecureNext Softwares will remain one and the same as they always have been. Going forward, this will be much more apparent because both entities will be sharing the same name.
2007 was a very good year. It was because of you, our clients that had a good year. We experienced growth in terms of head count, number and size of projects, sales and more. We are excited to what 2008 has in store for us and all of you.
SecureNext has some exciting plans in store for the coming year. We will reveal those plans over the next several days so please check back tommorrow.
TS
December Stats, 2007 USA Only
Just to share our reach with United states, Our stats exactly matches with the clients we serve now.