A recent survey from Evans Data shows enterprises using outsourcing in a way many IT industry observers already knew.
There’s no CrackerJack surprise contained in the Summer 2005 Enterprise Development Survey from Evans Data. 28 percent of respondents, a pool of nearly 400 developers at enterprises of 1000 or more employees, said their firms were outsourcing for purposes of cost savings.
About 19 percent of firms outsource for special expertise not present in-house. Evans Data said in its study that five years ago the percentage was 44 percent, compared to cost savings as a reason for 15 percent of the time.
“Outsourcing once made use of high level experts to bring particular expertise to a development project but now we’re seeing that outsourcing is much more likely to be used to save development costs,” said John Andrews, Evans Data’s Chief Operating Officer, said in the release.
“Most companies outsource less than a quarter of their development, most likely lower level programming tasks that are more cost-effective to outsource rather than devoting an in-house programmer to such jobs.”
Sending away these “lower level programming” jobs seems to send a mixed message from the tech industry, which has claimed not enough high school students select the computer science field in college.
Students and their parents, in turn, see stories in the news reflecting these outsourcing actions; where can a new US computer engineering graduate find employment if entry-level jobs continue to leave the country?
Outsourcing won’t go away anytime soon. 33 percent of the respondent pool believes their firms will increase outsourcing next year. For those who will be staying on with their enterprises, 60 percent expect to be working with open source code on projects in the next year.
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
