The use of IT Offshore has entered a new era. We are seeing a much stronger integration with other Offshore Development Centers (ODCs) in other parts of the world and with the organization in the onshore country. IT Offshore has, like all other industries, developed over time and our postulate is that in the coming years we will see that the use of IT offshore will be further professionalized and that the benefits will

IT Offshore 1.0.
With its beginnings in the 1990’s, when offshore thinking originated in India, heavily promoted by the Indian government, the focus was primarily on the labor-intensive processes. Or to put it bluntly – all the tedious work that we in the West didn’t want to do or could see an immediate financial gain off was outsourced. The tasks were typically delineated and with a setting that did not differ much from the colonial attitude of the 19th century. Even the smallest detail was specified, as the general assumption was that the Indian worker probably could work long and for a cheap salary, but we had to handle the architecture and business understanding ourselves. We must note, with deep astonishment, that from time to time this attitude continues to be there. 

IT Offshore 2.0.
Approximately 15 years ago the trend was that offshore employees became a more permanent part of the larger international organizations and onshore companies started to see the IT offshore departments as a permanent part of the organization that had come to stay. Many tasks were still limited and the specification was extensive, but the value of building an actual domain knowledge in the Offshore Development Center (ODC) was beginning to be seen.

Offshore 3.0.
IT offshore 3.0 is emerging in these years and involves full integration with the organization in the onshore country – some countries are naturally far ahead, but everyone is heading in the same direction. We are therefore no longer talking about our offshore department, but about our offshore colleagues. We no longer send a long requirement specification to our offshore team. We cooperate with them about the daily challenges and find solutions to problems. We no longer see our foreign colleagues as people to be helped but have captured the fact that they are usually better educated, more experienced.
The development team has truly become virtual and the sharp brains at home have understood that architecture and problems often are developed and resolved offshore. This also opens up an equitable and business friendly strategic use of offshore, which creates value for many companies in the form of strategic competitive advantages and not simply a simple saving in the quarterly accounts.

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