| Protecting Yourself in an Offshoring Situation |
Protecting Yourself in an Offshoring Situation
Offshoring software development is a tricky process in any situation. You are essentially entering into a partnership with another company to take ownership over a mission critical part of your organization and entrusting not only your IT infrastructure to them but many times significant intellectual property that must be protected to assure your survival as a business.
Even within a company, there are some levels of security that are kept in place to protect highly sensitive intellectual property even from your own employees. So to turn over that crucial information to an external agency is not only risky, it must be done with extreme care to protect your IP and to assure that it's security is not compromised at all costs.
It is essential before you put out the RFP for offshoring that the issue of the protection of intellectual property become part of the initial requirements definition that is central to the selection of the offshoring agency. Whether the project to be offshored is a single software project or management of your entire IT infrastructure, there will be a level of trust and disclosure that goes on between your company and the companying taking over this function from you. Not only must IP security be observed in all formal communications, it should become a priority even at the employee level as your staff interacts with the offshoring company's staff during the project development life cycle.
This is where the due diligence process must be executed at the highest level of intensity to assure that the company you chose to take over this part of your IT development passes all security background checks. Depending on the level of sensitivity of your intellectual property, the security of your competitive intelligence may justify paying a higher cost for a reliable offshoring partner rather than putting cost savings too high in the selection criteria which may result in you partnering with an offshoring company who is not as reliable in this area as they ought to be.
The intellectual property issue becomes even more of a priority if you are considering offshoring your software development offshore. In the last decade offshoring these functions to companies in India and other countries in that region has become popular. The cost savings of handling software development are considerable and can give your company a competitive advantage because it enables you to come to the marketplace with a viable product at a lower cost.
Keep in mind, however, that from a cultural point of view, many countries in the Middle East, and the Far East do not have the same laws or cultural sensitivities to intellectual property issues as we do here in the west. To put it bluntly, many companies that may be on your short list for offshoring may have no idea that protecting your trade secrets has any value at all. In these countries, the concept that ideas are property or that plagiarism or outright theft of another company's IP is wrong is not in their thought processes at all. It isn't that they are being deliberately crooked by compromising your security. It just isn't part of their culture.
Therefore take extreme care when selecting any offshoring agency and this is of the highest concern when offshoring overseas. By making protection of your trade secrets a high priority from the project definition level and going forward, you are being prudent to protect that one thing that gives your company the ability to compete in your markets and that is your intellectual property.
598
|
Appropriate or Inappropriate Offshoring When the idea of offshoring some or all internal functions is introduced in a company, the ...
read more
Backing Into the Project Plan When a new concept for a software solution is conceived of at the corporate level, ...
read more
Cyber Programmers The economy over the last ten or so years has done a lot of strange things to different ...
read more
Finding the Right Offshore Software Developer The phrase "the world is getting smaller" is a popular one these days. Of ...
read more
Help Staying Cutting Edge For many modern businesses, staying on the cutting edge of technology is important. This is particularly ...
read more
How to Make a Mess of Offshoring It is easy to "jump on the bandwagon" of offshoring software development. Using ...
read more
It's All in the Offshoring Contract When you offshore software development to a software development company, the single most important ...
read more
Know Your Contractor Inside Out Sales people are a wonder to behold. And when you are receiving proposals for offshoring ...
read more
Living up to the Contract The first step of any project to offshore project development is to put out a ...
read more
Make Your Contractors Work for You Offshoring the developing of a software solution should be part of the considerations for ...
read more
Making Sure Your Outsourced Project is on Track When you offshore a project or a task of a project to ...
read more
Managing a Diverse Team When you take on the task of serving as project leader for a complex software development ...
read more
Minding the Store Offshoring your software development is often a slam dunk idea from the management level because you can ...
read more
Offshoring Testing Anyone who has been in the business of software development knows that one of the hardest tasks to ...
read more
Offshoring Out of the Country In any business, there is a balance between maintaining the staff and resources for an ...
read more
On Sending Your IT Work to India The flood of offshoring of all manner of work to India has become ...
read more
Protecting Yourself in an Offshoring Situation Offshoring software development is a tricky process in any situation. You are essentially entering ...
read more
Selling Management on Software Development Offshoring If you are in IT management and you are charged with finding the best ...
read more
Taking the Teeth Out of Offshoring Turning over mission critical parts of your software development to a contractor to take ...
read more
Taking Your Web Development Elsewhere Developing a web site for your business is an important step to stay in touch ...
read more
The Contractor's Attitude When IT work is offshored to contract labor, there a lot more to that than just turning ...
read more
When NOT to Outsource The trend toward offshoring software development in businesses has given IT management and senior executive management ...
read more
When the Contractors Leave When you offshore project development, there are a lot of advantages to be had. You take ...
read more
Who Can- Give You Great SEO? In this new century to have a business of any kind and not have ...
read more
Why Not Let Writers do Your Technical Writing? Software development takes some very specific and technical skills. When you build ...
read more
|
|
|
Disclaimer:
The Publisher has strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in
the creation of this website, notwithstanding the fact that he does not
warrant or represent at any time that the contents within are accurate
due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet.
This site
is a common sense guide to Protecting Yourself in an Offshoring Situation. In practical advice websites,
like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of income made.
Readers are cautioned to reply on their own judgment about their
individual circumstances to act accordingly.
This site
is not intended for use as a source of legal, business, accounting or
financial advice. All readers are advised to seek services of competent
professionals in legal, business, accounting, and finance field.
Any
perceived slights of specific people or organizations are unintentional.
|