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Mistakes to Avoid When Outsourcing Software Development Projects

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Mistakes to Avoid When Outsourcing Software Development Projects

Running a software development business can be tough in today’s day and age.

From a harsh deadline to fierce competition, to potential economic turmoil, there are plenty of things to stress about. One way for businesses to catch a breather and save time and money is to outsource help from other companies. Outsourcing software development projects comes with many benefits. As much as it can help your business, getting it right can be tricky. 

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Outsourcing can be the ticket you need to take your small start-up to newer and more prestigious heights! To help you out, here’s a list of common mistakes to avoid as a business looking to outsource some help. Read on to learn what you need to steer clear of to make sure the next time you outsource development, you get it right!

Not Making the Right Preparations

A lot of things go into making sure a software development project goes off without a hitch. Without the right foundation and plan set up, even with the best resources, your project is likely to fail. Before calling up your outsourcing company, make sure to have a solid plan going first. 

For starters, create a solid business plan for your project with a step-by-step guide on how you plan to achieve it. When outsourcing a developer, look for the best way to fit them into your plan to accommodate your needs. Figure out the best way to communicate with your developer and their team. Sort out a designated team from your company who will oversee the project and make sure things go smoothly. Iron out all the details before signing a deal with anyone.

Not Choosing the Right Partner

The easiest way to make a mess of your software development is to skip the research and outsource the wrong person for the job. Not choosing the right business partner to work with can cost you time and money and can spell disaster for your project. 

To find the right development partner, you have to do some research. When looking for reliable software outsourcing companies, look for ones that can match your vision and can grow with you. Look at their experience with jobs like yours and get to know the people who will be working on your team. Look at their credentials and reviews and see if your partner company will be working solely on your project or not. Before jumping the gun and signing an outsourcing deal, be thorough in your research.

Outsourcing Partners that are Behind on the Times

Another common mistake that companies make when outsourcing is hiring someone out of touch. Software development is an incredibly competitive field, and you only need the best of the best for the job. To put your project’s best foot forward, you have to set it up with a tech-savvy and modern developer. 

Your developer needs to be up to date with all the latest software, technologies, and tactics. If they’re behind on the time, your project will be developed by outdated technology. Your finished product might be too complicated to figure out by users if it’s not made by modern developers. This can hurt your brand image and sales, so make an effort to choose a partner who’s with the times!

Not Having All Your Ducks in a Row

One way to ensure that your software development project goes off without a hitch is to make sure that everything is up to par on your end. Not having all your ducks in a row can lead to mistakes, mishaps, and the failure of your project. To keep up your end, make an effort to have only the best and most qualified people for the job. 

Create a team that knows what they’re doing and can get the job done with minimal hiccups. Make sure your team stays on top of their weekly goals and schedule so that the project doesn’t fall behind. Make sure there’s harmony and good communication on your end, and you’ll find that the project will go much smoother, no matter the developer

Lack of Communication

As with many things in life, good communication is the key to the success of your development project. Without clear communication, both sides are more likely to misinterpret and make mistakes. This can lead to chaos and the development being disorganized, and can even lead to the failure of the project. 

When outsourcing, always be clear about your wishes, visions, and expectations. Make sure your developer knows what you want and is aware of what your expectations are. Make good communication lines a top priority throughout the project. From between companies to each team member, communication lines need to be clean and functional. Create an environment where miscommunication and confusion can be ironed out easily. 

Undervaluing QA Testing

Last but not least, the biggest mistake any company can make when developing software is to underestimate the power of QA testing. Quality assurance (QA) or testing is an essential part of the developmental process, and you cannot skip it if you want your project to be a success. Software development comes with a lot of bugs, and it’s irresponsible and inefficient to leave them to the end. Leaving the testing until after the product is developed is the worst thing you can do for your project.

Testing your product as you go can help you identify mistakes or problems early on and nip them in the bud. Doing regular quality control will save you time, money, and stress down the line and stop small issues from snowballing into bigger ones. Whether the problem is part of the code, developer, or team on the job, doing regular checkups is the key. 

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So there you have it! When outsourcing software development, always make sure to create a solid plan first. Once you’ve outlined your plan, choose the right developer to work with to get your product off the ground. Look for developers that fit your needs and are fresh with the times!

To avoid any hiccups in your development, make sure everything is under control on your end and keep all our ducks in a row. Be transparent with your developer and make good communication an integral part of the entire project. Last but not least, don’t leave the testing till last and make good use of QA. Whether you’re a big tech company or a small start-up, avoid making these mistakes, and you’re good to go!


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TECHNOLOGY

Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

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AWS re:Invent, which has been taking place from November 27 and runs to December 1, has had its usual plethora of announcements: a total of 21 at time of print.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the huge potential impact of generative AI – ChatGPT officially turns one year old today – a lot of focus has been on the AI side for AWS’ announcements, including a major partnership inked with NVIDIA across infrastructure, software, and services.

Yet there has been plenty more announced at the Las Vegas jamboree besides. Here, CloudTech rounds up the best of the rest:

Next-generation chips

This was the other major AI-focused announcement at re:Invent: the launch of two new chips, AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2, for training and running AI and machine learning (ML) models, among other customer workloads. Graviton4 shapes up against its predecessor with 30% better compute performance, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, while Trainium2 delivers up to four times faster training than before and will be able to be deployed in EC2 UltraClusters of up to 100,000 chips.

The EC2 UltraClusters are designed to ‘deliver the highest performance, most energy efficient AI model training infrastructure in the cloud’, as AWS puts it. With it, customers will be able to train large language models in ‘a fraction of the time’, as well as double energy efficiency.

As ever, AWS offers customers who are already utilising these tools. Databricks, Epic and SAP are among the companies cited as using the new AWS-designed chips.

Zero-ETL integrations

AWS announced new Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for MySQL integrations with Amazon Redshift, AWS’ cloud data warehouse. The zero-ETL integrations – eliminating the need to build ETL (extract, transform, load) data pipelines – make it easier to connect and analyse transactional data across various relational and non-relational databases in Amazon Redshift.

A simple example of how zero-ETL functions can be seen is in a hypothetical company which stores transactional data – time of transaction, items bought, where the transaction occurred – in a relational database, but use another analytics tool to analyse data in a non-relational database. To connect it all up, companies would previously have to construct ETL data pipelines which are a time and money sink.

The latest integrations “build on AWS’s zero-ETL foundation… so customers can quickly and easily connect all of their data, no matter where it lives,” the company said.

Amazon S3 Express One Zone

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Express One Zone, a new storage class purpose-built for customers’ most frequently-accessed data. Data access speed is up to 10 times faster and request costs up to 50% lower than standard S3. Companies can also opt to collocate their Amazon S3 Express One Zone data in the same availability zone as their compute resources.  

Companies and partners who are using Amazon S3 Express One Zone include ChaosSearch, Cloudera, and Pinterest.

Amazon Q

A new product, and an interesting pivot, again with generative AI at its core. Amazon Q was announced as a ‘new type of generative AI-powered assistant’ which can be tailored to a customer’s business. “Customers can get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions, generate content, and take actions – all informed by a customer’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems,” AWS added. The service also can assist companies building on AWS, as well as companies using AWS applications for business intelligence, contact centres, and supply chain management.

Customers cited as early adopters include Accenture, BMW and Wunderkind.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

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Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).

Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.

The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.

Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.

“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”

Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.

“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”

Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, HCLTech, Hybrid, meetings

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Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

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Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.

It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.

MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.

Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says

In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.

With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.

Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.

“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“

MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.

Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: automation, Canonical, MicroCloud, private cloud

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