“As growth accelerates, Forrester believes that product development will emerge as a unique segment different from traditional offshore IT services. R&D requires an alternative approach and psyche to serve product companies that range from startups to tier one automotive supplier. The mindset required to support the whole product development life cycle and work processes differentiate it from traditional IT services.” – Forrester Research Inc.

“If the developments and research projections are anything to go by, then by 2008, the market size in the Outsourced Product Development (OPD) space in the country is going to increase exponentially, taking the number of engineers engaged in the OPD space from 1,00,000 to 2,50,000. The statistics are an indication that India is on track to emerge as one of the world’s leading centers for OPD,” says V R Govindarajan, CTO and Founder Member of Aztecsoft.

Reality check - It is not simple to plant your foot print in the OPD space and start delivering; OPD relationships vary in their defined objectives depending on each customer’s operating model maturity, culture, organizational structure, requirements etc. To succeed in the OPD space it is important for the vendor to show competency all around the SDLC activities and beyond – covering areas such as quality processes, IP security, recruitment, retention and so on…

A big challenge is the availability of talent in the OPD space. Though India has a large pool of engineers with experience in general IT services, they don’t necessarily have the technological depth needed to build products. Added to this is IP concerns. OPD was the last area that any of the product companies were willing to outsource in the past due to the IP issues involved. Another major factor was market size. Generic offshore services have a larger market size when compared to OPD, hence a few niche players have been operating in this field.

Aztecsoft has been among the pioneers and forerunners in the OPD space for more than 10 years. As one of the first movers in this space, it has been in a unique vantage position to foresee technological and delivery challenges early on and reach process maturity much faster. Aztecsoft successfully met the pace of changing economics of software engineering for new products. Key to success – Innovation, focus and predictable engineering execution to meet the shrinking margins with little room for trial and error.

Aztecsoft has taken these challenges head-on - Many a times Aztecsoft hires resources and put them through the requisite training before allowing them to work on projects. The training provided is world-class, prepared by the R&D experts within the company. On the IP front – Aztecsoft has taken strict measures to see that IP is not tampered with. In most cases, we have separate seating areas and sub-nets to ensure the safety of a client’s IP. Aztecsoft’s employees need to sign non-disclosure and confidentially agreements to protect the customer from any IP violations.

Product companies are looking for partners who can add value beyond generic programming services. Companies wants such partner to work through out the product development lifecycle and offer them process, technology, and time to market advantages. It is also very important for the OPD vendor to show flexibility to take the non-core work – show value and graduate to core development assignments.

Doing all the right things the right way - With a satisfied client list that includes many of the largest global software product companies and a wide range of emerging technology start-ups, Aztecsoft has the best combination of expertise, experience and depth of services to make it the OPD partner of choice for ISVs today.