This morning started with exciting news by Google introducing Google App Engine that allows web developers around the world to build applications and use the same infrastructure that Google uses. Google provides authorization which is using gmail addresses and hassle-free deployment and scalability.
Below are the links that will quickly update you on the story:

1. Official news on Google Blog;

2. Home page where you can sign up for Google App Engine Account and download SDK plus other misc small things;

3. Getting started guide;

4. Gallery of applications which are already created (wow - more then 20 apps during the first day)

Now - it’s only a beta and registration is closed for the first 10.000 developers that were lucky to join the program. Our CTO is the happy person. There are many limitations which are currently in place but much of those should be lifted after the official release. The only supported language now is Pyhton. Luckily (or should I say proudly) here at MoveYourWeb we have such people and working on the first applications already.

There is HUGE buzz in the developers community already with the rumors that it’s competing with Amazon Web Services such as S3. The benefits are obvious - you concentrate on developing while not worrying about the system administration and servers. It would probably can compete with Facebook Applications platform also. During the last year the developers around the world were engaged in developing applications for Facebook trying to leverage it’s user base (and for good). Say every 1/10 customer of ours showed an interest in developing applications for Facebook. What might happen now is that everyone will want to leverage the user-base that Google has and build the application for on their engine also. You have gmail account already, right? With this say - it’s all the guessing game in the day one after the release and we will see how it will evaluates. For now we can just state: we are in this game already and working on our test applications plus we will be happy to help the existing and potential customers with the development of applications using Google App Engine.

The list of public holidays in Belarus (MoveYourWeb development offices are located here) will help our customers and partners to make the appropriate financial planning as well as resource management for the year of 2008. In this list we reflected the holidays which are celebrated during the working days. This might change slightly during the year (+1/2 days as additional holidays might get announced). Isn’t it short?

1st of January - New Year

7th of January - Orthodox Christmas

1st of May - International Labor Day

6th of May - Commemoration Day

9th of May - Victory Day

3rd of July - Independence Day

7th of November - October Revolution Day

25th of December - Catholic Christmas

Hint: when the holiday falls on Saturday or Sunday in Belarus - it’s celebrated the same day and doesn’t get shifted to next Monday or previous Friday. This generally makes the short list of holidays even shorter.

As 2007 draws to a close, everyone at MoveYourWeb would like to thank you for recognition and appreciation of our work. We enjoyed continuous rapid growth last year and are thankful for that! In a shortlist we remember the following about 2007:

- Full-circle Sales department setup;

- The list of technologies and project types was extended (facebook applications, social networking, media streaming, mobile games);

- A number of customers visited us in our offices in Belarus – which was productive and fun;

- Top professionals joined the company and the most talented been promoted;

- Huge number of projects was successfully accomplished;

- We celebrated our 6th year anniversary.

In 2008 we will continue to work day and night to exceed your expectations in MoveYourWeb as the outsourcing company of your choice. Our biggest goal for 2008 is to help you achieve your goals!

Thank you once again for your business! The entire MoveYourWeb team wishes you and your families and friends a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2008!

If you are an owner or a marketing peer of small or medium business you definitely should spend 15 mins of your time for making first step in Facebook marketing.

For those of you who are still not familiar with Facebook the following facts are listed:

• The total count of active Facebook users is 55M+;
• 250.000 users join the network daily;
• 35% (and growing) users of Facebook are professionals, in 2006 Facebook shifted the focus away from being a students social network;
• Because of the focus shift the fastest growing age category is 25+ years.
• 1000+ developers start using Facebook API daily to develop applications covering every aspect of life.

The above mentioned means that Facebook is the perfect marketing opportunity for B2C businesses and the first steps toward marketing of Facebook will be creation of a corporate page there.

The following guide explains the corp page setup process step by step:

1. On the profile setup page select the industry relevant to your business;

2. Enter all the necessary descriptions about your business (overview, mission, product - the more the better) and upload corporate logo so the visitors can recognize the business.

3. Click on your business name hyper link and then click ‘Publish this page’

4. Become ‘fan’ of your business. And here is where the magic begins. As soon as you became ‘fan’ of your business your Facebook ‘friends’ will get the notification similar to the following one: Peter Melnikov became fan of MoveYourWeb. Assuming that the big part of your ‘friends’ would be your customers part of them most likely become ‘fan’ of your business to and ‘friends’ of ‘friends’ will see it too…

5. Optional. Might be number 1 if you played with Facebook arleady - before creating a corporate page add a lot of new ‘friends’ to your account by converting the database of your customers to facebook friends (many are likely have a Facebook account already). That will increase the results of this small marketing campaign proportionally.

Want to see a sample corporate page? Check out MoveYourWeb on Facebook and feel free to try becoming ‘fan’ of our business. Questions? leave those in comments and our Facebook developers or marketers will reply asap!

We all know that competition is a crucial business law, and that if there were no competition, there would not have been progress. In the case of most businesses, competition is comprised by a big or small number of other companies involved in the same business but mostly in the same country. In the case of outsourcing, offshore outsourcing companies have to compete not only with other companies in their home country, but also with other countries of the world, which makes the competition tougher, but also stimulates and encourages for better and better results.

According to A.T. Kearney Global Services Location Index, 2007 (below is the cut down version of the Kearney’s research. The original version is available at http://www.atkearney.com/res/shared/pdf/GSLI_2007.pdf), Russia is rated in top 50 locations worldwide that provide the best remote functions, including IT services and support, contact centers and back-office support.

Table 1

Note: The weight distribution for the three categories is 40:30:30. Financial attractiveness is rated on a scale of 0 to 4, and the categories for people and skills availability, and business environment are on a scale of 0 to 3.

Source: A.T. Kearney

If we look into the summary of Gartner Outsourcing Summit in Dallas in March, for example, we will see that Russia is mentioned in the trinity of IT outsourcing global leaders. It is not a surprise. The total value of Russian IT market grew 25 times over the last 7 years, and it means that outsourcing in Eastern Europe is speeding up the pace. Below you will see the table demonstrating the marks for quality of workforce in a number of countries involved in outsourcing:

Table 2

Source: PRTM (Pittiglio Rabin Todd McGrath), Ernst & Young

It is evident that India’s progress has become an example of how people can gain profits offering developed countries the services that they strongly need but at lower rates. As a result, the 90-s have brought the world a number of offshore outsourcing companies in Eastern Europe, which have been making a tough competition to Asian countries for about 10 years already. However, it is quite challenging to change the people’s established opinion of India as the best country to outsource jobs. On the other hand, if we think where this common belief takes its roots, we will understand that only from the fact that India is the first on the outsourcing market.

So, now, why is it a common belief among Americans that India is the best place for outsourcing? Is it a stereotype? A mistaken view? Or maybe there is something at the bottom. Let’s speculate. Below is a table with a comparison analysis of Belarus and India as two potential countries that an American company would think of contracting for outsourcing.

Table 3

According to the table, Belarusian outsourcing promises to be a smoother process than Indian outsourcing with its communication gaps and quality breaches. However, since the Indians were the first to offer outsourcing services to American and European companies India transformed into a ‘brand’ or synonym to outsourcing. That doesn’t necessarily mean that this is number 1 choice of an outsourcing destination nowadays – the Indian outsourcing market is overheated already.

What conclusions can we make from the mentioned above?

First of all, Belarus has a more favorable geographical location than India. Located almost in the heart of Europe, Belarus borders on countries-members of EU, which makes it incorporation into the European culture quicker. Besides, Minsk, the capital, is within a two and a half hour flight from Frankfurt, which means that it will be possible to build business relationships not only on a virtual level, but also personally. It is critical that customers visit the office or delivery center of their outsourcing partners, establishing thus personal contact with management, get acquainted with the company’s workflow, facilities, etc.

Secondly, the Belarusian time-zone allows Belarusian and American working hours overlap, while Indian and American working hours do not overlap at all. Some of the businesses even offer almost full business-hours time overlap with the USA. There is not that much difference in the price, but there is some clear difference in the quality of the services provided. Belarus is known for performing all outsourced tasks promptly and effectively with the business relationships based on trust, teamwork, and effective use technology.

Third, Belarus is offering the same set of services as India. BPO is a niche, which still requires some intellectual investment, but this is only a matter of time. Lack of experience in BPO is fully compensated by a high level of expertise in software development.

Fourth, the Belarusian education is one of the strongest growth supporting elements. In fact, when it comes to experience with complex software development tasks, Belarusian developers tend to outrank all others.

Add to this the absence of vivid cultural differences and a good command of the English language, and you will see why Belarus is so much better than India. Plus ambitious plans of the Belarusian government for the future of the Belarusian IT. In 2004, the government announced an initiative
to create a high tech park that would unite the leading IT outsourcing companies under one roof and promote their services. Apart from that, the government has announced an ambitious goal to boost the country’s IT services export to 4 percent of that of India by 2008! All that makes us believe that Belarus is a true outsourcing hotspot in Eastern Europe.

outsource India , outsource to Belarus , outsourcing , outsourcing jobs to Belarus , outsourcing offshoring

As a Director of Marketing here at MoveYourWeb it falls under my radar to update and maintain our own corporate web site. The shame thing is that our portfolio section was really outdated (yeah in bold). We do have the set of customers that we work with for many years so they are perfectly aware of our technology expertise as well as solutions that we’ve created. We also have enough management at different levels who are always ready to suggest on the work in specific technology or industry that we’ve accomplished. A big percentage are contacting us thru WOMM so a lot of our new prospects are already educated about our company’s services and past work.

Anyway there is a still put of prospects coming from sources other than WOMM and it takes our Sales Dpt additional time to compile the list of projects accomplished for specific industry, especially when the same work should be done again and again on a daily basis. So here I go – researching the ways to organize and structure Case Studies section for offshore outsourcing company. 30 companies located in TOP50 Google under a relevant search quarries were reviewed. Find the results of the research below:

1. Downloadable Case Studies – a prospect is able to select the case study of interest and download the pdf by filling out a short form. Service Provider can use this data for further promotions, prospect education by sending relevant promo info to the subscribers thus trying to convert the prospect into a customer with time. The negative aspect of this model is that it takes time to fill the form/check email/open the pdf. The other negative thing is that the Case Studies published are generally presented in a A-Z list rather being structured by industry/technology/etc.

2. Client List – list of customers is published on the web site with additional description of their business. This model is relevant for companies handling small projects (their prospect is luckily to see similar company at the Client List and sign up).

3. Portfolio – list of finished projects, normally provided with the screenshots. The services providers should really choose this model if they are in creative business only. So web design studios and companies should choose it because it allows to reflect the style of the finished work, not the technical details which is critical for complicated projects focused on back-end rather the UI.

4. Case Studies grouped by Services – e.g. web development, software development, emended programming. The prospect is able to quickly find the relevant projects finished by a service provider and estimate the level of vendor’s proficiency. The question that arises is why service providers put Offshore Dedicated Center as a separate service. One customer may hire a team of web developers and another of software guys, the third will be hiring SEO Consultants. Shouldn’t that fall into the Service grouping directly? I think so. Ask me what to do with the Case Studies for Offshore Dedicated Center – don’t include this ‘service’ in a case studies structure at all! From a sales/marketing prospective Offshore Dedicated Center is an engagement model not a standalone service (well unless an ODC is of 20+ full-time people or ‘Build Operate Transfer’ model which is a different story).

5. Case Studies structured by Industry – e.g. banking, real estate, financial. No comments on that – clear for everyone

6. Case Studies by Solution – e.g. CMS, ERP, ecommerce.

7. Case Studies by Platform – e.g. .net, java enterprise. That one speaks for itself as well.

Our choice is to show case studies sorted by 1. Services (the most important and demanded), 2. Industry, 3. Platform and 4. Solution. The ‘Portfolio’ section that we’ve used before will fall under ‘web site design’ and ‘web site development’ services. Coming to production and will be reflected on the web site soon!

Being an offshore outsourcing company, MoveYourWeb doesn’t regularly have face-to-face meetings with the customers. The distance prevents daily personal communication between our managers and customers. However, if you are contracting an outsourcing offshoring company and have a long-term relationship, it might be nice to visit the country that they are from, to see the office they are working in, get to know the employees who are performing work for you. This helps you establish solid long-lasting relationships with your offshore partner and contributes to thorough and fruitful cooperation.

MoveYourWeb Offshoring Web Development Company is located in Belarus (Eastern Europe) with its headquarters in Minsk, the capital, and the branch office in Homel. Located conveniently in Eastern Europe, Belarus is easy to reach from any spot of the world. Minsk has a newly renovated National Airport Minsk just 50 km (30 miles) from the city center, ultra-modern Central Train Terminal with regular trains between Minsk and practically every major capital in Europe; and a developed net of highways.

Belarus is blessed with gorgeous landscape defined by splendid foliage - and coniferous forests, numerous crystal-clear lakes, spectacular rivers and immense green fields. Our climate is quite comfortable for all foreigners who come here. With warm and moist summers and mild, yet sometimes snowy, winters, Belarus sees about 175 sunny days a year. Belarus is known for its diverse culture, including visual arts, ceramics and music, unsurpassed Belarusian cuisine, and kind attitude to the foreigners.

MoveYourWeb will help our partners who wish to visit Belarus arrange a business trip. We’ll handle the official invitation for our partners to obtain a business visa to Belarus. The easiest and most popular way to get Belarussian visa is upon arrival (the belarussian officials will stamp it right in the Airport). The fee for visa upon arrival is $180 for US citizens. As soon as you arrive, we’ll pick you up at the airport and assist you in terms of accommodation and other things you might need. We’ll take special care of your visit so that you feel maximum of comfort on your business trip.

You will definitely like Minsk, which, yet big and busy, is kept surprisingly clean and pleasant to live and to stay, while numerous parks and green areas create an oasis of peace among the city’s hustle and bustle. Minsk offers a variety of accommodation options for your convenient stay, but, to be honest, our hotels are not our strong side – they provide an average level of comfort at a price of $60-160 per night for a single room, and $100-200 per night for a double. New grand 5-star hotels are being under construction at the moment, and very soon Minsk will offer its guests world-class accommodations in hotels. By now, if you are seeking luxury and maximum of comfort, we can arrange a super luxury apartment with all the modern amenities you can imagine - located in the city center, penthouse at a price of $250 per night.

When it comes to eat, Minsk offers a number of choices to enjoy your meal varying from grand and expensive restaurants to small cafes and take-aways. You will be able to indulge in delicious Belarusian, Italian, French, American, Japanese, and Mediterranean cuisine at modern and immaculately decorated restaurants with excellent service: James, Saloon, Westfalia, Casa Agustin Lopez, 7 Tonn, and hundreds of others welcome you to try fantastic culinary masterpieces created by their talented cooks.

Now, as you arrived, unpacked your things, refreshed a bit, and had a lunch or dinner – it is high time for a business meeting. The typical itinerary for the day is as follows:

1-00 pm assistant of the CEO picks the customers and drives to the office

1-30 pm - introductions

2-00 pm - project meetings

3-00 pm - break

3-15 pm - project meetings

4-30 pm - lunch

5-30 pm - project meetings

6-00 pm - assistant drives the customer to the hotel/restaurant/any

place of interest

11-30 pm - chill out in a night club.

We also recommend not to plan any project meetings for the first and the last day of your stay so you can recover after the flight and have time to pack/unpack the suits.

Having a spare weekend is a nice opportunity to see the stunning places of interest such as Opera and Ballet Theatre, Victory Obelisk, Cathedral (catholic) of Simeon and Alyona, Minsk Botanical Garden, Trinity Suburb (where our office is located by the wayJ) in Minsk itself; or visit some nice Belarusian historic places in the Minsk District, including Mir Castle, Palace-and park ensemble in Nesvizh, Historic Museum in Dududki, Khatyn Memorial, Stalin Line; unique parks and preserves, like Belovezhskaya Pushcha, and Berezinski Preserve.

It seems like your business trip is going to be very saturated, and it is not only business but also discovery! Our company will give you assistance in all your matters while you are in Belarus. But before, please, read some of our practical tips

Practical Tips:

• Language

People in Belarus speak Russian. Even though most of people study English at school, language problems may arise sometimes (but not with MoveYourWeb employees), so don’t be surprised in case you can not communicate with regular people on the streets.

• Cash & ATMs

There are many ATM machines in all major cities. However, having some money in cash is necessary, because credit cards are not widely accepted. Money is Belarusian ruble and its current rate is here. You may get Belarusian money from currency exchanges, which can be found in abundance in all Belarusian towns. Euros and dollars are okay in many places. You will be able to get Belarusian rubles in any ATM located at in the nearest shop, there are some specific ATM’s allowing dollar/euro withdrawals.

• Hygiene & Health

Tap drinking water is typically safe - you don’t have to boil it or anything. Epidemiological situation is reasonable - close as in US or Western Europe. No malaria here

• Communications

There are Internet cafes in Minsk and other cities, which provide cheap, but usually slow Internet access. Also many postal offices offer have Internet services. Public phones use cards only, which can be bought from newsagents. You may always go to the Postal office in Minsk, which provides internet access 24-hours every day.

• Tips

Generally you should give tips only in the restraints - which is not obligatory as well. If you pay by credit card you will not be able to specify a tip amount. So just leave some cash (5% of the order) while leaving.

Belarus is located in Europe and there is no big cultural difference from other developed countries so generally all other popular rules apply here. All customers who visited our company or Belarus in general are welcome to comment and share their experience in regards their stay.

Offshore Dedicated Team (ODT) or Staff-based ODC is a relatively new term to name a group of specialists, united into one team to suit the needs of a customer, who is in need of IT developing or designing certain software products or fulfilling back and front office tasks for mainly financial services industry. The offshore dedicated team is usually hired for performing a certain task once or it may be hired on a permanent basis for fulfilling every day routine activities, which are not the essence of the business, but which are nevertheless important. Such teams normally work for a fixed monthly fee.

The members of the offshore dedicated team work under the supervision and control of the customer, and can often be available during the business hours, needed for the customer. That is, the team may work the same hours as the business or they can work at the time, when the customer’s business is not working, thus creating a 24-hour working environment for a firm. Offshore dedicated teams often supervise the business processes on behalf of the customer, which guarantees superior productivity.

Offshore dedicated team providers usually offer their customers software development centers with the newest technologies, often with various cost-reduction plans during all the period of the project. When hiring an offshore dedicated team, the client often gets much more than just professional IT specialists. The problem of keeping a professional IT team together becomes the problem of the offshore center, which again helps save costs. The offshore center also takes care of taxes, which gives further cost savings options. These advantages allow the clients to invest their resources into other important activities, not spending extra time and money on managing the everyday and routine tasks.

Nowadays, offshore centers can offer a great number of offshore dedicated teams, which specialize in several knowledge fields. IT development, web technologies, analytics, front and back office operations, intellectual property services, clinical research, legal research, business research, publishing services, real estate services, case study services, call centers, human recourses, customer care are only some of them.

An offshore dedicated team center is to some extent an extension of the customer’s business office. The center aims at presenting the best skilled work force, facilities, and benefits to their clients, making the necessary operations to protect all the rights of the customers. The offshore dedicated team also offers a cost effective plan for those intending to cooperate on a permanent basis. In this case the team is constantly trained to for the specific needs of a customer, which ensures perfect quality of the services rendered. Finding and selecting the right offshore dedicated team may be a time-taking procedure; however the benefits received by the customer are usually worthwhile.

The countries, which have established the greatest number of knowledge process outsourcing firms, are India, Philippines and China. These countries possess extensive knowledge banks and enough professionals in different fields for fulfilling the knowledge process needs of businesses in the USA. The work of knowledge process outsourcing firms requires profound analytical and highly specialized skills.

It is estimated, that knowledge process outsourcing is rather prospective and is going to grow in the next few years. Most probably, the area of information technology services, which is currently provided by knowledge process outsourcing firms will expand and include such services as intellectual property services, clinical research, legal research, business research, analytics and publishing.

Right now, knowledge process outsourcing firms specialize in the fields of content writing and rewriting, research and development, patent research, pharmaceutical technology, equity research, market research, data research, database management, finance modeling, design and development in various industries, animation, medical reports and services, distance education. Engineers, doctors, attorneys and many other professionals are becoming more and more popular.

Experts of the market research industry have already evaluated all the benefits produced by knowledge process outsourcing firms and have started to outsource the fields in which technology and IT solutions seriously improve the research process. The researches are highly profitable as they are really cost effective. Even small companies can make use of them, not having to increase their budget spending. Therefore, knowledge process outsourcing is a really proven method of quickly boosting the productivity and cost savings in the field of market research.

The article has been taken from Knowledge Process Outsourcing, Ezinearticles authoritative resource