One of the development directions through CMM Top evaluation: Software Outsourcing

Background information:

It is reported that 2004 "Asia Information and Communication Technology exhibition" will be held from April 26 to 29th at the New International Expo Center in Shanghai. "Software Outsourcing" will become a core highlight of this exhibition. At present, the development of the world economy is increasing the international industry correlation, the global software market demand also continues to rise, this trend has provided the development opportunity for the software industry of the developing countries.

According to experts forecast, by 2006 China will become the world's third largest information industry market, by 2015 will be the first to grow. In the Chinese government's current 5-year plan, the government will invest 500 billion of dollars to develop the information industry. At present, the software and information industry is growing at an annual rate of more than 30% annually. There are signs that Asia's software manufacturing industry, or even the global software manufacturing industry, will move to China, a prospect that has a huge allure for many of the country's software companies.

In this context, software enterprise development outsourcing business has become the world's software industry development trend. Software outsourcing in developed countries has become a necessary means for software enterprises to develop, and international software outsourcing business is becoming more and more mature. Therefore, China's software industry to develop, software exports will be a very important way.

And as a pioneer of China's implementation of CMMI5, the company began to prepare the implementation of CMM's original intention is to improve the quality of software products, improve the international software industry in the core competitiveness in order to expand international business, open overseas markets, to undertake foreign software project orders. Therefore, this direction should be one of the main directions of new business in the future.

Development opportunities:

The root statistics show that the global software outsourcing market accounts for about 70% of the North American market, the European market accounts for about 15%, and other regions around 15%. America's software outsourcing business is more than $40 billion trillion a year, and the market is growing at around 22% per cent a year. Nearly 40% of America's Fortune 500 companies outsource software to countries such as India. In other words, software outsourcing is a huge profit market, and seizing the market will mean more money and more opportunities.

The maturity of customers in developed countries is generally higher than that of domestic customers, usually can put forward the demand of the comparison standard, the domestic software enterprise completes their business demand at the same time, can also learn some advanced management thought and the technical method, can use this unceasingly enhances own level, strengthens the development team construction, Increase communication with the international market.

Furthermore, the development level of the software industry is closely related to the development level of the whole national industry, as the current international software export ranked second in India because of the lack of domestic market demand, resulting in a very poor internal business. And China's overall industry development advantages far stronger than India, and Indian software companies have begun to bidding the European and American markets, but the cost reduction is the development trend of the software industry, so China is becoming another very important alternative market. In 2002, the U.S. media made an estimate of the export capabilities of Chinese software: China will squeeze India in 5-10 years to become the second largest exporter of software.

In addition, due to the broad domestic market, some foreign software companies in order to seize the Chinese market, the establishment of research and development institutions in China, but also for the Chinese train a group of large-scale systems experience, multinational companies working experience, good communication skills of software personnel, for the development of software outsourcing has laid a certain foundation.

At present, the domestic outsourcing business of the software companies are mostly small size, a large number of small volume of business. Really can be the outsourcing business bigger, stronger, do fine enterprise handful. Therefore, in the domestic, software outsourcing business This piece of really powerful opponents are not many. And the United States does not usually contract to companies below Level 3, and with the popularization of CMM, the future requirements will only be further improved, now the domestic through 4, 5-level enterprises are very few, so this situation for through the CMM4, 5-class enterprises have a considerable advantage, can be an important development direction in the future.

Adverse factors:

Because of the current scale of domestic software enterprises, funds, technology, management deficiencies, resulting in the outsourcing business is mostly low-level coding tasks, high-end business such as system analysis, design rarely involved, difficult to learn from the current outsourcing business core technology, and the development of software is mostly industry application software, There are few outsourced projects for general-purpose software, such as systems and tool software. Therefore, software outsourcing for China's software industry level improvement although there are some benefits but there is no fundamental help, can only be said to be a software company's current development and profitability of a model.

In addition, software outsourcing is mainly for foreign software companies processing, belonging to the export of software services rather than products and intellectual property exports, so the processors do not have the final software products and intellectual property rights, it is dubbed as "the labor output of the software industry." and outsourcing business by the foreign software industry is too big, if most of the business is put in the basket of software exports, in the long run, the development of the national software industry is likely to do more harm than good. The national industry informatization cannot leave the software industry independent development, therefore, the software outsourcing can only be a kind of country and the enterprise development beneficial supplement.

At present, the domestic software enterprise's international market development ability is poor, most of them have no international channels, most of the orders are subcontracted, not only the price is low, and can not directly communicate with the end users, it is difficult to correctly judge customer demand, combined with cultural background differences, making both sides communicate difficult. Results in more rework, lower efficiency and higher cost. At the same time, the domestic software development management level and the international advanced level compared to still have a big gap. Outsourcing on the level of software management, maintenance capabilities, as well as business, legal international standards have a considerable demand. These are the shortcomings of the domestic software companies.

Lack of talent is also a aspect, although the current domestic has grown a large number of programmers, but the real software engineers are still very few, if the lack of software engineering talent, it is difficult to develop the world's top software products, can always stay in the similar processing of low-level coding level, the software industry is difficult to bigger and Although the country has started to develop the master of software engineering since the end of 2001, the number of people in the future will be far from the future if the trend is to be seen.

Due to cultural background and other reasons, China's software outsourcing business is mainly the Japanese market. But to really develop software outsourcing business, to seize the European and American markets is an inevitable trend. Once into the European and American markets will face similar to India, Ireland and other powerful opponents, and their domestic enterprises in the market development capacity, management level, technical strength and other aspects have a certain gap, these gaps are still to be shortened.

On the whole, enterprises to go abroad, competition for overseas software market must further improve their core competitiveness.

Model discussion:

Where opportunities and difficulties coexist, how should our outsourcing business work? This is a matter of opinion, and there have been people who have admired the Indian model and served as a model. Others shrugged off India's success model, thinking that the language and culture of the two countries were not the same, and that they did not work in China at all. In fact, the Indian model can not be completely copied, but can not blindly exclude, India's successful experience or there are many places worthy of our domestic enterprises to learn. India's software technology is not so much better than ours, but why tens of thousands of people's software enterprises can be managed in good order, and our software enterprises hundreds of people are difficult to manage, we can see that we are mainly in the management, so that domestic enterprises to learn from India's some excellent management model, especially in project management and quality management.

In addition, we also have to choose to outsource the object, should focus on the European and American markets, although the future of Japan's outsourcing business needs should be increased, but after all, the demand is very limited, so that the Chinese software industry to compete for a tiny market, like a lion to a small piece of cake, the result must be not enough to eat. And Europe and the United States to sign a relatively high level of contracts, Japan is often in the lower level signed, the single enterprise is purely selling manual labor, to the development of enterprises is not helpful.

The concrete practice is the enterprise according to the subcontractor request undertakes the system analysis, the software design, the coding, the test whole link or the partial link work, or according to the cooperation agreement carries on the project cooperation, completes the related software development work, and through the standard quality management method, finally provides the user with the satisfactory software PRODUCT

Available resources:

QA Engineer in Quality Department as Quality assurance work, can be developed by software Engineer of Development Department, test engineer of Test department.

Applicable to: European and American markets, Japan market, the domestic market.