By J.L Reid
Triangle Tech Journal
Raleigh, NC – To many IT professionals who’ve
fallen victim to the soft job market, Triangle-based
companies like Serenus Technology Group and International
IT Services (IITS) are the enemies. These firms help
local companies develop software by employing programmers
overseas. “I think for a century now, at least
in the US, business has been global,” says Tim
Hess, Serenus’ President and CEO, “[It’s
a] fact that most large US-based companies have some
multinational component. The fact that Serenus is multinational
I think is natural.” Although the visceral assertion
that jobs are directly being transferred from the US
to other, lower wage, countries is somewhat true, if
we stop at a list of statistics and job trend figures
we might be missing the larger picture. “We’re
creating jobs via our own company and via the leverage
we provide to our client companies. I think that is
a very positive situation.”
As full-fledged software development firms, both Serenus
and IITS are moving away from the “traditional”
overseas outsourcing model where a domestic company
markets and resells IT services performed exclusively
overseas. That business practice, as Serenus’
Director of Business Development Michael Tucker points
out, is most often the source of negative feelings towards
overseas outsourcing. “That’s a work-for-hire
situation, and I wouldn’t classify us as work-for-hire.”
Both IITS and Serenus improve upon overseas outsourcing
by implementing larger project management staff both
domestically and at their international development
centers. In Serenus’ case that is a “wholly-owned”
subsidiary in St. Petersburg, Russia where they typically
send two-thirds of a given project’s load. IITS
currently has two development centers, in Vietnam and
Australia, and are looking to open a third center in
China. Both companies employ a globally distributed
software development model, and would like to be seen
in that light.
“I can’t think of one situation where
Serenus has displaced a job over here,” both Tucker
and Hess assert. Michael Lai Le, a former IBM veteran
and Vietnamese refugee who founded IITS, is more than
optimistic about the advantages of overseas outsourcing.
“This is a global economy, and that’s not
going to change,” he states. “Now if someone
down the road were to look at what would happen if we
didn’t use overseas outsourcing, he’d see
that the amount of [jobs and money] we’d be losing
is a lot more.” Le holds firm to a belief that
companies have to outsource purely because it’s
economical.
“My study shows that because we use overseas
outsourcing the number of IT jobs here will increase
from 10 million to 15 million within ten years.”
The types of jobs Le has in mind are those that both
IITS and Serenus proudly use to counter the animosity
people have to sending “American jobs” abroad.
Both companies actively work with startups that wouldn’t
have the capital to function as a company if they only
used US-based resources. Le illustrates that IITS services
can be 1/5 the cost of using developers here. If a project
needs five developers, that resource can be secured
easily overseas for the cost of one US developer. The
remaining company resources can then be used to hire
managers, marketing staff, and other positions. “These
[startup] companies can only exist because we help them.”
Peter Dolina, IITS’ VP of Business Development,
warns against holding onto the currently defined IT
marketplace. “As a developer I have a challenge.
To become valuable I need to be an [software] architect.
I need to become a sales engineer. I need to add value
by doing those things that someone overseas cannot do.
We are training a lot of kids to be programmers. Are
those really the high value-added jobs that are going
to be valuable 10 years from now? Unfortunately, I don't
think they are.”
Le certainly agrees about the future of domestic IT
jobs, “We will be doing something else, just not
coding anymore.”
International IT Services: www.iits-usa.com
Reference Link(s):
http://www.triangletechjournal.com/news/article.html?item_id=305
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“Combining outsource and local software engineering is the best way I've found to optimize new product development at a reasonable cost when building a new startup.” 
“We were impressed to find a team so technologically advanced and eager to integrate into our development timeline.” 
“International IT Services has treated us with an unmatched integrity of service.” 
“Partnering with IITS strengthens our value proposition, increases our capacity, and reduces time-to-market for new products.”
"I wanted to partner with an organization that I could always count on to scale as I grew." 
"As an IT consulting company we needed a custom application development partner who could deliver on both Microsoft and Java platforms. We finally found one." 
"IITS integrated into our consulting services seamlessly. They helped us win several deals through their high quality .Net development and attractive cost reductions." 
"CanDo Benefits from IITS Flexible Software Test Lab - Flexible QA Lab Provides Software Developers Increased Quality Control" 
"Test automation helped telecom leader shorten time-to-market." 
"We needed a partner who could port and test hundreds of mobile wireless applications, and we selected IITS for their wireless mobile capability and their commitment to quality." 
