Outsourcing jobs in the technical arena was once seen as a way to save companies money and, although the trend continues, many organizations could use a wake-up call when it comes to getting the most from their software talent pool, says Matthew D. Edwards. His new book, "Becoming Globally Competitive in Software: The Fundamentals for Regular People" (now available through AuthorHouse), is designed to educate people about what skills are truly necessary to be competitive in this industry.

"People want to understand why their software jobs seem to be going overseas ... This book will teach you, the software student, practitioner and/or manager, how to become competitive in the global resource pool in which we reside," Edwards explains.

In sometimes humorous, always straightforward conversation, he discusses topics such as serving the customer and learning to discern what really matters along the way by exploring what he calls "some difficult and often unpopular subjects." Among them are notions like these:

-- The professional software talent pool is truly global, and each
individual is only a grain of sand on a world beach;
-- There is more value in seeing the forest than in worshipping the tree;
-- Know when to solve a problem, when to simplify and when to be quiet;
-- Delivering a technical solution is a social problem;
-- Overpay the right people for the right reasons; and
-- Serve the customer and provide immediate value, or someone else will.

"Software jobs have been and will continue to be outsourced and off-shored, [but] there is a way to stall and reverse the tide," Edwards says. "It has everything to do with the tenacity and choices of each individual technologist."

It is the responsibility of all those who touch, breathe upon, construct, deliver and facilitate software system solutions to change the game, says Edwards.

"Today, if you want to be employed, have a career and make some money in the global software industry, you absolutely must know the fundamental skills and attitudes necessary to add value to a customer's life."

Edwards is the co-founder of Ajilus, an Iowa-based software company. He has worked in various capacities throughout the end-to-end software development and delivery life cycles, and he holds several technical certifications.

Once upon a time, people bonded with their co-workers on office softball teams and traded gossip at the watercooler.

OK, so those days aren't gone yet. But as big companies parcel Information Age work to people in widely dispersed locations, it's getting harder for colleagues to develop the camaraderie that comes from being in the same place. Beyond making work less fun, feeling disconnected from comrades might be a drag on productivity.

Now technology researchers are trying to replicate old-fashioned office interactions by transforming everyday business software for the new era of work. The historically dry-as-sawdust products are borrowing elements from video games and social-networking Web sites.

You can tell just from looking at the Beehive program under development at IBM Corp. that something is different. Beehive's color scheme is bright yellow, not IBM's standard blue. The cheerfulness reflects the fact that Beehive is meant to encourage far-flung co-workers to like each other more.

Beehive is an online portal for employees to describe their expertise, so valuable knowledge doesn't get lost inside the bureaucracy. Those kinds of tools are common, but Beehive adds an unusual dose of Facebook or MySpace. The 27,000 IBMers using Beehive can post pictures, video and one-sentence updates about themselves. They can share lists of "things I can't live without."

Such personal touches often are missing when people work at a distance from one another, says Joan Morris DiMicco, an IBM researcher developing Beehive. Co-workers in different locales can't wander into each other's offices and see family pictures on the desk. They don't shop at the same places or have children in the same schools.

These tidbits, DiMicco believes, help people understand each other better. And the usual communication tools like e-mail, instant messaging, phones and even videoconferencing do only so much to fill the gap.

This problem isn't confined to IBM, whose 386,000 employees often find themselves working with people from Boston to Bangalore to Beijing. It affects any company where telecommuting, outsourcing and globalization have spread the staff across cultures and time zones.

At Intel Corp., for example, many project teams have at least one person who has yet to meet the group's boss face-to-face.

Recently, Intel tried to improve the situation by testing a "visual business card" system. Participants could not only list standard information about their location and job title, but they also could post pictures, brief biographies and things they like.

Now Intel is exploring whether virtual-world software, which can show graphically rich, 3-D representations of meeting rooms, auditoriums, factory floors -- you name it -- will make it more natural for groups to collaborate. Intel's initial efforts are focused on such tasks as monitoring computer centers, designing products and training staff.

Other companies are already using virtual worlds for certain events, allowing people to maneuver graphical representations of themselves, known as "avatars," through online trade shows and product demos.

When CDC Software recently staged parts of an annual sales kickoff event in a virtual world created by Unisfair Inc., it included an online version of the golf outings that commonly accompany such affairs. It held tournaments in baseball and golf video games -- and gave real trophies to the champions, said Julian Hannabuss, a CDC sales director.

In the coming years, more aspects of everyday working life could include virtual interactions that resemble games but are plenty serious.

One reason is that the technology is getting more sophisticated. For instance, if my avatar appears to be sitting to your left in a meeting, what I say into my computer microphone can come through your left computer speaker. And I'd hear you on the right.

Soon such meetings will be able to incorporate images from Web cameras that capture gestures and face movements -- so your avatar can reflect your nonverbal communication cues, crossing its legs or frowning when you do so in real life.

"Those kinds of things make you forget there's an interface mediating you and the other people at all," said Greg Nuyens, CEO of virtual-world creator Qwaq Inc., whose clients include the energy company BP Group PLC. "You'll just be in a room with them."

Eyeing that same future, IBM researchers are exploring whether groups of people in different locations can bond by playing collaborative virtual-world games, like solving puzzles together. IBM calls the effort "Inward Bound," a nod to the Outward Bound wilderness exercises.

And an IBM project called Bluegrass is testing how software programmers in different locations can organize their work in a virtual landscape. People traversing this virtual world appear as the pictures they posted of themselves in Beehive. IBM researcher Steven Rohall hopes to enable people engaged in solitary, "heads down" work at computers to get the kind of "heads up" interactions that come from walking down the hall in an office.

Put more simply, perhaps: "We can make work suck less," says Reuben Steiger, CEO of virtual-world creator Millions of Us.

Steiger predicts that office politics will be transformed as virtual interactions replace or augment in-person connections, because the technology often liberates wallflowers to act more aggressively.

Cindy Pickering, the engineer overseeing Intel's internal virtual-world efforts, says younger employees will be key to quickly advancing socially oriented workplace software. They're already used to chatting and playing online, whether in networking sites or complex video games.

Still, one big question is just how many plane trips for actual meetings can be realistically replaced by software.

"I don't think we'll ever completely replace the human interaction element," Pickering says. "Instead of us going out and playing softball together, now we'll just go play an (online) game? I don't know how satisfying I would find that."

Another question is whether getting distant co-workers to enjoy each other more will actually improve workplace productivity. Research on the subject indicates that a much bigger factor is whether people trust their colleagues to do their parts.

Outsourcing help desk services to an offshore location may yield as much as 30 to 40 percent cost savings, but customer satisfaction must be a key factor when making this decision, according to Gartner, Inc.

“Although offshoring an IT help desk may produce significant cost savings, IT management needs to determine whether that decision is right for the enterprise,” said Richard Matlus, research vice president for Gartner. “For most IT organizations, the help desk is the primary end-user-facing organization, so if end users are not satisfied with it, then it will have a negative effect on the IT organization.”

Based on informal client interviews, Gartner analysts found that offshore help desk service voice support services have experienced problems, particularly those located in India. The problems are focused on poor quality that can lead to significant customer dissatisfaction.

Four factors have been identified as the main contributors to the customer dissatisfaction:

* Client knowledge – When a help desk is internal, the client has its own employees supporting the help desk. These employees have access to internal communications which enable them to clearly understand their business and, therefore, support end users. When the help desk is outsourced, the service provider tries to capture the information into a knowledge database, but the information is not always kept up to date or easily understood.

* High turnover – A recent Gartner survey for all IT services showed that the worldwide attrition rate was 14.7 percent and offshore it was 22.1 percent. Although this can be a problem anywhere in the world, it can be extremely prevalent in low-cost countries where many IT job opportunities exist and many IT help desk agents will switch jobs for a small salary increase.

* Cultural differences – If a client has a problem, he or she will relate the problem over the phone, but because of cultural differences, the help desk agent may not interpret the problem and react in the most appropriate manner. For example, a client employee may have a problem on a PC and want to know how to fix it. Instead of explaining how to fix the problem, the offshore agent may take control of the employee’s PC and change the image without explaining how this was accomplished because the agent doesn’t want to insult the client. However, the client employee may be dissatisfied because he or she doesn’t learn what was wrong or how to fix the problem resulting in a need to call the help desk again in the future.

* Language dialects – Although Indian-based providers’ agents speak English, they are generally trained in U.K. English and may use British words or a more formal context, format, tone and enunciation. Because many clients are from North America, this adds to oral communication problems. This can cause frustration for the client and the agent, and lead to dissatisfaction with the help desk experience. However, when a help desk problem is sent via e-mail or on a Web chat site, this language problem is not a factor, and customer satisfaction is positive.

“Although quality in the first year of offshoring is likely to be poorer than domestic help desk solutions, if an enterprise can be patient, quality and customer satisfaction can reach acceptable levels that are on par with domestic service,” said Mr. Matlus. “This occurs more rapidly with global clients that have a multinational presence. If a client has perseverance and end users are tolerant, then an offshore help desk can be successful.”

Gartner offered key recommendations for enterprises to help ensure the success of an offshore help desk service:

* Assess and validate whether the offshore provider’s services can meet requirements.

* Review the service provider’s offshore practice for building and updating its knowledge database.

* Review the provider’s offshore service for cultural understanding, language proficiencies and employee turnover ratios.

* Talk to references using offshore help desk resources and ask what issues they may have encountered.

* Understand that the help desk may be the first line of IT support to your end users, so offshoring should
not just be a cost decision.

* Evaluate low-cost onshore alternatives as well. The savings available from low-cost onshore and
“nearshore” alternatives may negate the desire to go offshore.

India will gain about eight million outsourcing jobs over the next decade as the industry booms in smaller cities, according to official forecasts.

Minor cities in India will snap up about two million of these jobs, according to a report of India's top 50 cities for IT and business process outsourcing (ITO and BPO) by industry association Nasscom.

Currently 90 percent of the industry's workforce is based in India's top seven ITO and BPO cities, but the report states this will drop to 75 percent over the next decade as employers turn to smaller alternatives.

Overburdened roads and oversubscribed universities in the seven key centres, such as Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, mean the industry needs to develop smaller cities such as Ahmedabad, Coimbatore and Visakhapatnam, the report states.

These smaller "tier two and three cities" will be needed to provide about 50 percent of the required skills in both ITO and BPO, where talent shortage remains a large constraint, according to the report.

But the report claims the government needs to begin building infrastructure and education facilities in the smaller cities to underpin this future growth.

Dr Ganesh Natarajan, chairman of Nasscom, said in a statement: "We now see the time as being right to spread this development to a new set of locations, provided the requirements of the industry can be met."

In a statement, Nasscom president Som Mittal said: "The development of only a few select sets of cities has put severe pressure on the infrastructure, costs and also increased migration of resources."

"We see immense potential in the next set of locations if the right steps are taken now," Mittal said.

The government recently backed a one-year extension of a tax break for software companies and Mittal said he hoped the government would create more special economic zones, where companies enjoy other tax benefits.

The study looked at 100 metrics, such as business environment, government support, infrastructure, knowledge pool and skill-set availability, operating cost and social and living environment in the 50 Indian cities.

Reflecting strong growth of the Indian industry, 20 Indian firms have successfully made it to the list of top 100 outsourcing companies in the world.

The latest '2008 Global Outsourcing 100', compiled by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) that features 20 Indian firms has five of them - Infosys (ranked 3), TCS (6), Wipro (7), Genpact (9) and Tech Mahindra (10) among the top 10. All five are leading software service providers.

In the list, Accenture is on the top slot and IBM comes second. Companies on the list averaged $1.7 billion in annual sales and engaged 27,000 employees across the world.

Other Indian companies in the list are HCL Technology (11) Mastek (16), WNS Global Services (19), Hexaware (22), ExlService (26), 24/7 Customer (28), Cambridge (36), ITC Infotech (40), KPIT Cummins (42), Patni (46), Zensar (53), MindTree (54), Mphasis (56), Aditya Birla Minacs (62), FirstSource Solutions (73) and VCustomer (84).

According to IAOP, the key strength of Wipro and TCS is their 'employee management' while 'executive leadership' is cited as the strong point of Infosys and Genpact.

On the other hand, 'outsourcing experience' is attributed as the main strength of Tech Mahindra and HCL Technologies.