Enterprises scaling up outsourcing of Software activities: Forrester

The latest Forrester Research report on the state of Enterprise Software Adoption asserts that enterprises in North America are scaling up outsourcing of their software activities, especially in the areas such as custom application development services, maintenance & support for packaged applications, and maintenance & support for custom applications, and that software-related outsourcing is most common among the largest (Global 2000) enterprises. 

In his report, titled - The State Of Enterprise Software Adoption, Forrester’s Principal Analyst, R “Ray” Wang analyses the trends in software technology adoption by enterprises, based on the data extracted from “Forrester Business Technographics September 2006 North American And European Enterprise Software Survey”. For the outsourcing trends component, report takes into account a response base of 398 software services decision-makers at the North American enterprises. 

According to the report, one quarter of North American enterprises are currently using offshore providers to meet some of their software services’ needs. However, this rate climbs up if considered those enterprises that already outsource various parts of the enterprise software processes. It highlights that hiring an outsourcer to help deploy newly purchased infrastructure and/or applications software is now a common trend for North American enterprises, and the role of external service providers is an important portion of North American software shops. 

Observing that the largest enterprises are biggest outsourcers of software activities, Ray concludes, “Outsourcers hired to complete software tasks continue to move up the value creation chain and they are performing a wide range of activities.  Further, enterprises that currently outsource some form of their software-related activity are also more likely to have an open opinion toward offshore IT service providers”.

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