Offshore software development model offers massive cost savings for the European, North American and Australasian companies. The high exchange rate of western denominations against rupee coupled with rich Indian software talent has made India based offshore development an exciting value proposition without compromising on either the quality or the quantum of the required software.
When we talk of offshore software development model, the most important issue that stands out is that of the infrastructural viability of the whole model. Though infrastructure in IT industry is hugely dependent on the quality of the manpower, the need of requisite physical resources in terms of hardware, licensed software, well equipped labs and office space cannot be under emphasized. We at CIStems have made sure that your offshore software development project gets the best possible blend of physical and human resources.
SPACE
CIStems has an integrated offshore development facility and an advanced training center ideally located at Software Technology Parks (STP), Jaipur . The campus, spanning ten acres of land, has a very modern and open design that provides excellent ambience for creative .work. The facility is being developed in phases and will have more than 200,000 square feet of floor space on completion
The first phase of the construction, consisting of more than 70,000 square feet of floor space, has already been completed. The first phase provides spacious development labs, meeting rooms, training labs, lecture rooms and a large well stocked library. The second phase would be providing additional development and training labs, mini auditoriums, bigger library and a Cafetaria. Residential facilities are being planned in the third phase.
COMPUTING RESOURCES
The integrated facility at CIStems has development and training laboratories that are endowed with state-of-the-art computing resources. There are more than 200 computers networked on its corporate intranet.
The corporate intranet provides a host of servers including Windows NT, Windows 2000, MS Proxy, MS Exchange, IIS, Linux, Apache, TomCat, MS SQL, Oracle, Sybase and MySQL.
A variety of development tools and environment are available to the development teams including JDK 1.3, Visual C++, Visual Basic, VID, Developer 2000, Power Builder, Visual SourceSafe, CVS etc.
COMMUNICATION LINK
CIStems has a leased line connection to the earth station at STP providing high-speed persistent Internet connection to the offshore development teams. Direct connectivity with an earth station ensures that the software development teams have sufficient bandwidth to interact with the overseas clients and, if need be, carry out complex and resource demanding operations over the Internet in a highly distributed environment irrespective of the location of the client's development facility.
Our present communication link has served us very well in the various development, maintenance and quality assurance projects we have done for the US companies in the last two years. Some of these projects involved extensive communication and collaboration between the onshore team in the US and the offshore team in India, in the form of online meetings, emails, remote system administration and maintenance and document transfers.
STP also offers point-to-point connectivity, in multiples of 64Kbps, to a client location in the US or other countries.
With a clientele spreading all over USA, people at CIStems realize and live the truth of PriceWaterHouse's famous adage for the new economy, 'there are no boundaries'.
HUMAN RESOURCES
The offshore development facility is staffed with an appropriate mix of experienced and young software professionals with expertise in a variety of platforms including Core Java, Network Programming, JavaScript, VBScript, Java, JSP, Servlets, XML, COM/DCOM, MTS, UML, Struts, EJB, JDO, SWING, Applets, JMF, JMS, JUnit, log4j, JChart, ant, C++, CORBA, .Net, C#, ASP, Visual Basic, Oracle, MS SQL, MySQL, Developer 2000, WebLogic, WebSphere, JBoss, oc4j, Perforce, CVS, VSS, Test Director, Bugzilla etc.
The advanced training facility also offers a rich combination of academicians from diverse fields including computing science, mathematics, management and other branches of engineering who can undertake commercial research projects driven by the industry.
One of the greatest strengths of the offshore development facility is its access to a huge pool of around four hundred talented students who can contribute significantly in programming, testing and documentation phase of a development project. The students could also be used to develop prototypes or proofs of concept for new products and services. The biggest advantage offered by the pool of students is the ability to ramp up the team size within short time frames.
