Outsourcing Software Development: Engineering Services

Offshoring and outsourcing of software development solutions has been around for a while, and it is effective at reducing costs, improving efficiency and getting access to specialized and highly skilled engineering expertise.

With the competition in the global economy getting tougher everyday, outsourcing engineering and R&D practices provide a much needed helping hand to augment a company’s existing sofware infrastructure and resource expertise, enabling them to become more efficient and effective.

Business Challenges:

The client is a leading server and software manufacturer, and their servers are well recognized for mission-critical business applications. However, the Engineering and R&D division of the client had a highly skilled, though ageing population. The client had a history of researching, designing and producing innovative products in its niche market, and to ensure continuity in the division with young talent, client wanted to look at an alternate way of sourcing R&D engineers.

In addition to this, the client also wanted to reduce time-to-market for its products and have a mechanism in place to develop more product features in a cost-effective manner. Through these measures, the client hoped to improve its profit margin and mitigate the increased costs of running the business.

Aeries’ Solution:

Aeries worked with the client, and understood their business operations and pain points. Based on the requirements of the client, Aeries came up with the following approach:

• Aeries suggested that the client should expand its operations in India and set up Engineering and R&D unit in India for development and maintenance of three of its product lines.
• Aeries built a highly skilled taskforce across different domains, functional expertise and technologies through focused hiring on required skillsets, training and transition processes. The teams included:
  • System Management
    Platform management | Storage & Network management | Virtualization | Monitoring services | Device State | Management | Simple Network Management Protocol

• • Operating System
    Windows/Linux/ESX Device Drivers | USB, Storage, Networking, Video drivers | Porting Open Source Applications, cross compilation, Tools

• • Embedded Systems
    System Software Development | Programming ASIC/BMC devices compilation, Tools

• • Application & UI Development
    Java, C++, Python, Ruby, Restful API’s, Web Application | Databases

• • QA Teams
    OS testing |Server platform testing | Storage, Networking, Video, USB, BMC, ASIC testing | Automation framework development | Continuous Integrations/ Jenkins | Feature testing, Duration testing, Stress testing

    With this, Aeries ensured that the client got the right skillsets needed for the job while optimizing costs.

• Engineering Process and Tools teams were set up with full functional control including technical lead and domain experts. The team also included expertise like Windows Device Driver developer, Virtualization domain expert, etc.
• Active code development, reviews, etc. was done with a parallel team structure, integrated with US team to ensure operational continuity across time zones.
• The teams followed all standard practices in terms of agile methodology, source control management using git, weekly team meetings, etc. to ensure efficient operations.

Business Impact:

Through the Indian R&D and Engineering division, Aeries delivered significant annualized cost savings of more than 70%. The client was able to restructure its business with India being a part of its hiring strategy, with access to skilled labor at optimum costs. The  company’s profit margins increased considerably owing to the implementation of efficient and best industry processes and practices.