Some respected Internet sources give very cognitive information and can influence thinking. One source displays a diagram that shows offshore software development destinations. You can find several countries there, but Russia is not represented. Where is it included? Is it located in the “Eastern Europe” or “Other Countries” category? 

On the other hand, more and more large companies open development centers in Russia. This week Google opened its second development center outside the US in the same country. The country is Russia and the development center is located in Saint-Petersburg.  
 
Google chose Russian specialists to develop innovative software solutions. Murano clients do the same. If you are looking to set up your own offshore development center in Russia, we would like you to consider working with our dedicated teams of talented and highly skilled technical professionals.  
 

The Economic Development Authority in Fairfax County and Murano Software

The delegation of the Economic Development Authority in Fairfax County (FCEDA) including the president and chief executive officer visited the Murano software development center in Saint-Petersburg. The meeting was incredibly interesting as both sides interacted with each other quite well. We presented our organization’s, activities and benefits and discussed possible future collaborations with the FCEDA.

Our plans on the east coast

Since Murano’s headquarters is located on the west coast of the US, most our software development clients are based there. Recently, we’ve been considering expanding our operations throughout the United States. We considered expanding our operations in New York, Boston, Washington D.C., or Atlanta.

From the outset, neither northern Virginia nor the Washington, D.C area were not high on our list of possible locations. However, after we met with the FCEDA, we realized that Fairfax County is one of the best places to live and have a business in terms of economic growth, infrastructure, level of education, etc. We are grateful to the FCEDA delegation for giving us the opportunity to learn as much as we could about their region. We think they did a great job of promoting the county and providing assistance for international business development.

Informal part of the meeting

Our guests did not appear to be tired at all after their long flight and even kindly agreed to go sightseeing in the city on their first day in Russia. We really appreciated their willingness to discover Saint Petersburg!
The FCEDA delegation visited our office early in the work day, therefore they saw only a few of the Murano developers at work since they adapted to the time zone difference with our US clients. The delegation members said that it was interesting to visit our offices and see how easy it is to plunge into an atmosphere where the workers are highly enthusiastic even if the surroundings are unfamiliar.  

It’s obvious that lots of companies can minimize their development costs via offshore outsourcing. Thus usually one of the main criteria for choosing an offshore destination is price. Don’t you think this is a mistake?

If you seek a successful offshore outsourcing engagement, you must think of the results you want. You should pick a vendor that matches you in size or the size of your projects. It’s worth paying attention to developers’ abilities, skills and experience; put emphasis on people rather than on specific requirements of your project.

As for Murano Software, we are quite effective at cooperating with small and mid-size companies that are innovative. We provide our clients with dedicated teams of talented and creative problem solvers who are able to realize the client’s ideas successfully.

In our opinion, the best offshore effect occurs when the finished software product delivers the full functionality required to meet the needs of the client and it is delivered on time and on budget without any unexpected changes in the process of the development.
To get the desired offshore effect, you should enhance your in-house IT-team by engaging the top specialists in the world. Therefore ask for resumes, don’t be immediately concerned with how quickly a project can get done. Ask for company hiring policies and strategy. And finally, you’ll benefit from having access to a diverse talent pool that can quickly fulfill your requirements and deliver the quality software products and achieve better ROI.

Customers expect that software development outsourcing companies employ efficient methods of communication. As we say, outsourced software development doesn’t have to be a struggle, and clients should have the opportunity to take advantage of all outsourcing benefits.

Communicating via Instant Messaging is widespread; moreover it is an essential part of your relations with offshore software developers for discussing details, controlling the development process and exploiting the benefits of agile software development methodology.

To overcome the time differences, the offshore software developers that you contract with could shift their working hours. This makes online communications via IM possible and provides both parties with convenient timing arrangements. As a company focused on outsourcing, we hire technical professionals with a good knowledge of English. You, your IT director or your entire in-house IT team can collaborate or keep track of development achievements (depending on your needs), both verbally and in writing, via e-mail, MSN, Skype, NetMeeting conferences, the telephone and so on.

Of course, it could occasionally happen that you hear English spoken with an accent or that you may not be able to stay in contact with developers throughout your working day because of the time difference. Obviously we don’t dispute that these are points you have to be aware of when engaging in offshore outsourcing. We don’t hesitate to raise these issues, as we know that for our clients, location is not the essential factor in their decision to contract with us. Our clients contract with us primarily due to their interest in cooperating with experts in custom software application development.

One of the initial questions raised, when thinking of offshore outsourcing software development is how to maintain communication. Productivity in software development is measured by meeting customer needs, thus communication is all-important in providing time-to-market, cost-effectiveness and fulfilling other requirements. So when you select your offshore partner make sure that they have their headquarters or, at least, an office in your country.

We, at the Murano US office, not only discuss development needs before contracting, we also encourage feedback (both positive and negative) from our clients. This allows us to adopt our processes, react to issues quickly and replicate successes.

Who we are

Murano Software is a rapidly growing software outsourcing company. Since 2001, we have specialized in assembling and managing dedicated offshore teams of talented Russian engineers. With corporate headquarters in Los Angeles, CA, and software development centers in Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, Murano Software is firmly established on two continents. Murano offers services including software development (.NET, Java), web-design, testing and QA.

Why we are starting a blog

We have worked in the sphere of IT-outsourcing since 2001. We spend lots of time analyzing the global and Russian outsourcing development markets. Unfortunately, today there is not much information available on Russia’s market, which is a huge disappointment as Russia is the country with great potential. Russia has good technical schools that have a strong focus on math and physics. There is also an abundance of software programmers with expertise in research and development, so we can develop innovative IT solutions. Large cities have good infrastructure, and the country also has very active software associations that provide information to potential customers and make their knowledge gathering process easier. The education sector has undertaken several IT initiatives that will churn out thousands of software programmers in the future

What will this blog cover?

Therefore, we have decided to start our own blog to provide useful and interesting information about IT outsourcing in Russia.

Who’s it for?

We hope that our blog will be useful to people who want to work with Russian developers and for those who want to know more about IT outsourcing in Russia.