During a presentation to New York analysts, Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer made it clear that partnership with Novell “demonstrated clearly the value of intellectual property, even in the open-source world.”

Are we to understand that open source can no longer be distributed freely? According to his presentation, the answer is “Yes.” The major argument behind this message is that the Linux operating system is infringing on MS’s intellectual property rights. So, Microsoft may decide sue Linux sellers.

Open-source users are urged to use up their coupons from the Miscrosoft-Novell partnership. Those coupons entitle users to free support and maintenance for Novell’s Suse Linux Enterprise Server. The partnership implies that MS is going to offer the Suse Linux package for customers who want software featuring both Microsoft and open-source software elements. “Patent cooperation agreement” of Microsoft and Novell states that parties will not sue each other for patent infringement.

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The concept of offshore outsourcing for IT services is picking up serious momentum in the United States. For many entrepreneurs, the low cost/high quality of outsourcing IT is the essential element needed to launch or grow their businesses in a way that wasn’t possible before. Indeed, outsourcing is highly beneficial in terms of cheap overhead cost and competitive advantage.

But outsourcing can have devastating effects if not done properly. Dealing with overseas service providers doesn’t always result in success. If the outsourcing company doesn’t operate with the same set of values and doesn’t take precautions to ensure that confidential information is safe, then the consequences will almost immediately overshadow the initial glamour of offshore outsourcing.

Choosing the right offshore outsourcing company is the most challenging part. If you pick the wrong offshore partner to build your software, you may end up incurring a huge loss because of information leaks or an unskilled workforce. And if you outsource too much of your internal business processes, your company may start losing control over your ideas and business processes.

Once you’ve made the decision work with an overseas partner, it’s essential to conduct a deep analysis of all of your business process. You’ll want to create a list of “outsourcable” and “non-outsourcable” components of business. It’s extremely important thing avoid outsourcing projects that are too close to the core of your business processes.

After making a clear distinction between “outsourcable” and “non-outsourcable” business factors, your company will be less vulnerable to the hazards associated with poor performance, bad quality, contract breach etc. “Outsourcable” factors should get hands-on supervision and be well communicated to overseas software engineers.

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As software development costs in America continue to sky-rocket, an increasing number of software entrepreneurs are moving in the direction of outsourcing. Outsourcing software development offers multiple perks for software businesses nationwide; the most favorable of which is the lower cost of production. To lower production costs while keeping quality high is every business entrepreneur’s ultimate goal. Why? Because you can sell same great products as your competitors for a lower price.

In the highly saturated and competitive marketplace of software development, outsourcing has become an integral part of every IT business infrastructure in America. Countries like India are well suited for the job. A fairly advanced technology and service industry, a relatively effective capital market economy, a strong private sector and legal base, a skilled workforce, and a good system of higher education are factors that play a crucial role in the performance of Indian software firms on a global scale.

At first, the kind of jobs that were outsource to India were fairly low skill level jobs—like basic programming and call center manning. Today the types of jobs outsourced has shifted from basic skills to more advanced responsibilities like domain knowledge, transition challenges, change management, and HR issues and governance.

If the trend continues, we’ll see more and more American companies across all business sectors begin to send jobs overseas. Boeing planes are already being flown in India. Intel’s market share continues to rise. Major American car companies are now located in India. What was once a fad in the software industry has now become mainstream for a variety of industries.

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