Volume of Software Development Projects Increases 40% in Six Months

SANTA CRUZ, CA, December 13, 2004 - Contrary to popular fears, North America is the most likely recipient of outsourced software development projects, according to Evans Data Corporation’s Winter 2004 Enterprise Development Management Issues survey. Forty percent of outsourced software development goes to North American developers, 24% goes to Indian development shops and 6% goes to European developers.

More than half of enterprise companies outsource a portion of their software development but less than 5% outsource the majority of their software development. This is down from a high of 12% in the Fall of 2002.

"Two in five outsourced projects go to North American developers and most development takes place in-house with portions being outsourced to save money, to avoid hiring extra personnel or to utilize expertise not found within the company," said Joe McKendrick, Evans Data’s Enterprise analyst. "It is also possible that companies need to outsource more because of increases in the volume of software development projects, 70% of development managers report a higher volume of development projects in the last six months."

Other findings from the November 2004 survey of 400 development managers in companies with more than 1000 employees:

• Enterprise development managers expect to see larger IT budgets in 2005 with half of them expecting an increase and 41% expect spending to stay the same. Only 9% expect their IT budgets to shrink.
• Seventy percent of development managers have seen the volume of projects increase in the last six months, 20% of them have seen the volume of projects increase significantly. Only 6% of development managers have seen moderate to significant decreases in project volumes.
• Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are somewhat or very important to more than half of enterprise development managers. RSS feeds provide up to the minute information and developers use RSS to keep all team members informed of changes as they occur.

Evans Data Corporation provides regularly updated IT industry market intelligence based on in-depth surveys of the global developer population. Evans' syndicated research includes surveys focused on developers in a wide variety of subjects.

Copyright 2007 Evans Data Corporation. All other company names, products and services mentioned in this document are the trademarks and property of their respective owners.

###