Onshore, Offshore, Nearshore, Best Shore. Be Sure of Your Shore for Outsourcing.
Regardless of what the latest spam email might say, outsourcing is no trip to the beach. Before you consider the complicated NDA and SLA contracts, it's important to consider the best location for your project.
Outsourcing, just like software development, is becoming more and more crowded with jargon. Often, it seems that a special outsourcing dictionary would be useful to make sense of it all.
For instance, there are 4 current strategies when considering the location of a project.
- Onshore
- Nearshore
- Offshore
- Bestshore
Consider each one in turn:
Onshore Outsourcing
Onshore Outsourcing is just a complicated way to express the process of engagin another company within your same country for services. Much of the current jargon is based from the reference point of the United Staes. Thus, onshore outsourcing typically means contracting a United States company to provide business services.
Nearshore Outsourcing
Nearshore Outsourcing refers to contracting a company in a nearby country. Often this country will share a border with your own country.
Again, this term is often used in with the United States as the frame of reference. In this case, nearshore outsourcing will take place in either Canada or in Mexico.
Offshoring or Offshore Outsourcing
Offshore Outsourcing refers to contracting with a company that is geographically far away. Interestingly, this does not even imply that the country has a shoreline (but in most cases, they do). Countries that are popular locations for offshoring include Ukraine, Philippines, and India.
Bestshore Outsourcing
Bestshore Outsourcing is a term that was recently introduced by EDS. Their idea is similar to the concept of "using the right tool for the right job".
Each shore has advantages and disadvantages. Using each "shore" when appropriate will hopefully result in better communication, high productivity, and reasonable costs.
