Why? : North-by-South : northxsouth.com

The Advantages of Near-Shoring

Near-shoring refers to off-shoring to near-by locations to minimize the risks inherent in geographically-distributed software development. As the horror stories of mis-managed off-shoring to India or Eastern Europe continue to pile up, companies are increasingly looking towards near-by locations that offer the same benefits of India but without all the problems. We have compiled here a list of reasons why your software project should consider near-shoring your development:

Proximity. When you off-shore to India, you are almost always managing a "Twilight Zone" situation where your development team is living in tomorrow, while you are here in ... today. India is 12 time zones away from San Francisco. Eastern Europe is 9 or 10 time zones away. Latin America is 1 to 4 hours away — basically like working with the east coast or New York City. This increased proximity is literally a world of difference.
Production cost savings. While Latin America is near-by, there is still a substantial cost-of-living difference with San Francisco. With that and the currency exchange, engineers in Latin America can make high wages (from their point of view) while passing on savings to project owners (from their point of view).
Quality of code advantages. A recent article in Forbes Magazine foretelling the death of Indian out-sourcing cites increasing Indian wages happening at the same time as India institutionalizes the code factory model: "India, for all its glory, is still the world's back office. India's tech industry is a 'services' industry. The Indians don't do the thinking. The customers do." (02.29.08, The Coming Death Of Indian Outsourcing, Forbes) Well, our engineers do think! Latin American open source programmers represent a generation of coders who have dug into the source code of operating systems, web servers, databases, led by a natural intellectual curiousity and passion for technology.
Productivity gains. Tele-commuting is the future of business and, especially in the computer programming industry, is already becoming the best option today. Programming is a feat of concentration by an individual and the last thing you want to do with your prized development staff is distract them with all the normal annoyances of commuting & office life (as parodied in one sit-com after another). Programmers (and open source programmers, in particular) fit perfectly into a tele-commute model because they're used to using remote collaboration tools. Additionally, programmers are most productive in a work environment of their own choice. Remote development maximizes both productivity and efficiency.
Support free software! Finally, supporting the open source movement in Latin America is one of our core objectives as a company. We believe in free software and when you work with North-by-South, you are supporting a revolutionary technological change that is becoming the best public policy option for developing countries.

OPEN SOURCE IN THE AMERICAS

An open source users group for women in Brazil work on a hardware project together.

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