subject: Risks Associated With Offshore Web Development Services [print this page] Offshore software development (OSD) has a number of specific risks that can control the choice of entering into an OSD contract. Uncertainty about information confidentiality is a crisis of a growing concern. The same risks can be associated with offshore web development services as well. To avail every possible advantage of outsourcing software across national boundaries, one organization is bound to suffer or in good conditions, protect itself from these associated risks.
The first thing that offshore software Development business tends to assure a client is the protected handling of essential information about clients core business process. For an instance, a developer sends files with the source code to his confidential mailbox on the server to work on them. Such a security breach can ruin an entire contract, and still it is difficult to foresee and prevent because providing a total security is difficult task in this context. In case of in-house development, the developers team has steady and easy access to all the employees, involving use of the software. In a case of offshore OSD, it is necessary to prepare detailed technical requirements while constantly adjusting them to any change. This creates an unnecessary managerial and technological overhead, decreasing superiority of the future product. With all of this, uncertain financial payback can come in picture.
web development company outsourcing firms can encompass guarantees of cash flow, set by contract conditions, where client stays uncertain about the reimbursement on the product. The delivered product can meet all the technical necessities, but at the matching time it might turn out to be obsolete, else not support some technologies or standards that appeared throughout the development period. Being deficient in of control over the outsourced resources is one of the major threats associated with outsourcing of web development.
A situation when outsourcing firm has to develop a software to be used over a heterogeneous IT infrastructure of an enterprise composed of a variety of devises, legacy systems that cannot be replaced or upgraded by suppliers will. This creates specific technological challenges that can lessen outcome of an outsourcing contract. Outsourcing of software development can certainly increase complexity of management. Though it is considered a solution, which decreases complexity of management through IT functions, still OSD project management suffers from a lack of control, namely the uselessness of implementing tightly proscribed operations in such projects. If outsourcing of software development becomes free of above-mentioned risks, the whole concept of outsourcing will evolve unbelievably.
