By Stephen Bucaro

Open Office is a free open-source office suite that not only competes with Microsoft Office, but can open and save Microsoft Office file formats. It was created using code developed by Sun Microsystems for their Star Office product. Open Office includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, drawing application and several other applications. There are versions for Windows, Linux, Mac, and Solaris.

Open Office is easy to use because interface is similar to other office suites. Naturally, first thing I had to try was drawing program. Within seconds I was able to create 3D textured text and complex textured 3D objects.

Why switch to Open Office? Because now is time to free yourself from Microsoft's Monopoly. If you are not prepared to jump right to Linux, Open Office makes a good transition. You can work with Microsoft Office file formats in Open Office. Then when you switch to Linux, you can continue to work with Microsoft Office file formats in Open Office.

At OpenOffice.org website, www.openoffice.org, there are links to download version 1.0, and version 1.1 beta2. Version 1.1 adds PDF and Macromedia Flash export; DockBook, PDA offic-file formats, and flat XML and XHTML.

This article is designed to assist companies who are looking for Offshore Software Development partners In India in particular or in low cost countries in general. The paper covers mechanics of finding an offshore software development partner, setting up relationship and ensuring a successful and long-term partnership.

Benefits of Offshore Software Development India Some of advantages are listed below:

Significant cost savings, up to 80% in certain cases. The outsourcing company is able to release resources for high value-added and priority work and can concentrate on their core competence, designing, business knowledge while delegating technical tasks, maintenance, research or routine tasks to offshore software development company. In some cases offshore software development company can add significant technical knowledge also. While it can be quite difficult to recruit expected competence in Western countries, it is a completely different scenario in India, where there are many qualified programmers with good academic training. For temporary peaks Outsourcing company can avoid expensive new recruitment or high cost of local consultants and instead use lower priced consultants in offshore software development company. Consulting and programming capacity is available at short notice without increasing long term personnel commitments. Outsourcing company also reaps knowledge gained by offshore software development and consulting assignments. Some clients outsource their programming needs by getting programmers from India for short or long term projects to work onsite with their own design team. Others send whole or parts of projects directly to India for offshore software development in India.

Offshore Software Development India, Disadvantages

Following are some problems, which may occur if both parties are not aware of how offshore software development process should be set up.

Language and cultural barriers Time differences Technical communication problems Skill mismatches Quality discrepancies Security problems Lack of a repeatable process Bad management and hierarchical inflexible organizations All of these can be avoided, by choosing right offshore software development partner and working with proper and proven project management processes evolved during earlier offshore development assignments.

Sometimes Outsourcing company overlooks these risk factors, thinking that cost savings is so high that these risks are well covered. But in reality this can be a major trap.

Offshore Software Development India, The Ideal projects

Not all projects are ideal for Offshore Software Development. Any task involving proprietary knowledge, which can not be safeguarded with agreements, are not suitable for Offshore Software Development. Very technical and complex tasks can also be bad projects, since amount of communication needed may be so high that cost advantage is eaten up by having to explain everything. Very small projects may also be unsuitable, since time to prepare specification might be more than cost advantage.

But apart from these exceptions, most projects or subprojects are suitable for Offshore Software Development in India. Some of possible areas could be:

Platform porting projects (like porting from DOS - Windows, Windows 3.11 - Windows 95/NT, UNIX -> NT. Application conversions GUI design Database applications, migration and porting Web enabling legacy systems and client server applications Web development, designing, programming etc. e Commerce - projects Components like ActiveX, VCL, Objects, Reports, and Modules. Object Oriented Programming is very suitable for offshore software development projects. Technical Documentation, end user documentation and manuals Software QA and Testing Remote Linux / Unix administration Remote database administration Remote software maintenance and feature enhancements How to find an Offshore Software Development partner India Make sure offshore software development partner you are looking for fulfills at least some of following characteristics: