The changing face of outsourcing

The role of outsourcing companies, however, has changed. Whereas outsourcing providers used to ‘body lease’ employees, they are now becoming centres of innovation. An outsourcing provider is now an engine that, with its agility, provides creative ideas and technical know-how, driving slow moving companies towards modernity. Outsourcing providers are also now better equipped to make effective change, since many companies are looking for a long-term outsourcing partnership, rather than single, project-based work.

In big projects like Smart City development, there is also a growing awareness of the difficulties that are associated with large distances between a company and its outsourcing provider. If the outsourcing provider is in another time zone, it is often difficult to collaborate effectively, which limits the project’s progression.

The need for closer geographical partnerships has resulted in an increasing amount of businesses looking specifically for nearshoring, including within the Smart City and manufacturing industries.

Smart nearshoring

As more and more people choose to live in urban areas, city councils are under increasing pressure to make their infrastructure go further and cater to all their inhabitants in a smarter way. To cope with the demand for smarter cities and services, a growing number of public bodies are choosing to cooperate with IT outsourcing—or nearshoring—companies to develop a smarter infrastructure that embraces technology and improves city life.

When it comes to choosing a nearshoring partner for Smart City development, there are numerous benefits. Technology outsourcing companies often educate public bodies on the use of technology and help them enhance existing resources with digital technology, which is often cheaper than introducing new physical resources. By doing this, the public bodies can gain knowledge and resources from an external company while providing the smart infrastructure that is requested.

Industry 4.0

Alongside Smart City development, the manufacturing industry has seen an increase in the amount of automated machinery and services that are used and provided. With the drive towards smart manufacturing and factories fitted with cyber-physical systems, outsourcing companies are increasingly being used to help the production industry take advantage of the benefits that Industry 4.0 presents – especially by being asked to provide experts in algorithms, IoT, big data and security. Similar to Smart City development, outsourcing and nearshoring organisations can provide expert knowledge and services to manufacturing companies which can enhance projects and streamline services.

Using an outsourcing/nearshoring partner for Smart City and smart manufacturing projects can reap the benefits of gaining technological knowledge and services. Instead of simply ‘body leasing’ to organisations in need, outsourcing/nearshoring providers can begin to make a real impact on projects—building a smarter partnership for the future.

There are several important parts to each outsourcing partnership, including:

1. Clear communication

For a partnership to be successful, the company and IT outsourcing partner need to be able to communicate clearly. Typically, if two countries are nearby to each other they share cultural values, which is very important in business. For example, if your company is based in Europe, it is ideal to choose an outsourcing partner that is also based in Europe. The risks of miscommunication can cause various business failures, which can be avoided by choosing a partner that is in a nearby location.

2. Similar time zones

It may seem trivial, but time zones play an important part in a successful partnership. If the clocks are out of sync between your company and the IT outsourcing partner, there will be a limited opportunity to communicate. If an urgent matter arose and you’re in different time zones, it is difficult to rectify the issue quickly.

Paul Van Haver VP, Global Data Services at Techsoup and an experienced outsourcing practitioner appreciates the nearby location of Future Processing. When asked about the cooperation with us, he said:

For me there is something about having a better overlapping time zone, especially with the UK – we’re only one hour away from each other. That makes it a lot easier to work together, rather than looking for other places for partners maybe further out in the world.

3. Shared holidays and customs

In Europe, many countries share a similar cultural heritage and holiday calendar, which ensures that you and your outsourcing partner will be out of the office on similar days. If your outsourcing partner is far away from your organisation, you may be unaware of when they have national holidays.

4. Cultural alignment

Cultural alignment requires a mix of cultural similarity and soft skills of the IT outsourcing team. From the client’s perspective, this may even prove to be the critical factor. Only a partner who understands the needs and the mission of their client will be able to effectively fulfil their expectations.

Paul Van Haver told us also about this cultural feel between Future Processing and Techsoup as an NGO:

I was looking for something that would give me the right resources of the right quality with some cultural alignment to what we’re doing in our mission, in a way that wouldn’t be too far away from me.

5. Managing the relationship

The last factor is about the business bond between you and your partner. They must be able to establish and manage the relationship. This ability combines all the above factors and is becoming a trend in the IT outsourcing industry. We observe it every day looking at long-term partnerships with our clients.

At the Global Sourcing Association UK Awards 2016 Future Processing was recognised as the Outsourcing Service Provider of the Year. During the event, Kerry Hallard, CEO of the GSA UK, said:

This was without a doubt the most competitive year ever in terms of submissions. Those who attended the awards ceremony were given the inside track on the very best examples of technology in outsourcing, but also relationship and contract management, innovation, service delivery and collaboration (…).

If an IT outsourcing partner cannot prove to be a good cultural fit for yourself and your organisation, they may never become a good fit. Luckily, investing in a IT nearshoring partnership with a company from a nearby country opens up the possibility of a perfect cultural match.

The source of the problem

The history of most FinTech ventures begins with an innovative idea for a new system for money management, money spending, money lending, money transfer, money you name it. This particular idea must be adequately addressed, so an appropriate product needs to be developed. After the launch success, market demand for the product gradually increases. Obviously, the bigger the success is, the faster the demand rises. Suppose you are a FinTech CEO and the growth of your start-up is so fast that you need to augment your staff. First, congratulations on your roaring success! But now, it is high time you decided on what to do with this issue. You can choose from 3 options:

Plan A: Hire new workers

This appears to be the most obvious solution. Your company’s growth in the number of clients means heavier workload for you HR departments. However, before a new person and your company click together, your HR needs to spend long hours on-boarding and training them. This is crucial, if you want to make sure that you can trust and rely on your new recruit. What is more, usually one new person is not enough and you need to on-board and train a whole new team. Here, you realise that the world of financial technology is so fast that you simply have no time for complex recruitment processes.

Plan B: Outsource a part of your work

Once you have decided against spending time and money for head-hunting, the most probable plan B is IT outsourcing. Needless to say that today outsourcing is in its heyday. It is a cost-effective and time-saving solution compared to hiring new staff. Thus, no wonder that many companies choose to augment their personnel through it. But FinTech sector is specific. Indeed, it is important that the cost is reasonable and the time is saved, but security and confidentiality are of paramount importance. The former, because of the whole finance industry characteristics, where security of information is the key. The latter, because of the very start-up nature of FinTech – innovative ideas and know-how which have to be kept in secret. Luckily, this plan B is not the end of the list, and you still have option C to choose.

Plan C: Enter into a nearshore partnership

An IT nearshore partnership merges all advantages of an in-house team and outsourcing approaches. Your time and cost are saved and the safety and secrecy are protected (e.g. with a non-disclosure agreement). If a member of the EU, the country will follow similar legislation and you will be protected by European law.
Also, you can feel like your IT nearshoring partner is a part of our in-house team, as there is no time zone difference compared to offshore, distant countries. This allows your managers to organise meetings at their convenience and keep fingers on the pulse of the whole project. Finally, a neighbouring location enables you and your partner to visit each other regularly and develop the bond of mutual trust and with cultural and social similarities, there is a solid foundation for that.

The challenge of heavy workload – an award

The fact that you face heavy workload due to increasing interest in your service can make you feel self-satisfied. Not only does it mean that your business flourishes, but it also implies that it is you (not your competitors) who prosper. It is a problem that every FinTech CEO would like to have and software development nearshoring appears to be the solution they are searching for.

The recession forced companies to scrutinise budgets and new investments more closely than ever before. The economy might be recovering but most boards still want assurance that projected rates of return are really going to be achieved, before approving any expenditure. Working with our clients, we have found that project managers can be the key to helping plan and demonstrate these expected rates of return. However, to be effective they also need the right tools at their disposal. Companies which rely solely on traditional, stand-alone project management tools -like spreadsheets- are not going to be able to plan accurately.

Planning projects in isolation is far too simplistic. In reality, projects sometimes vie for the same resources within a company – after all any organisation’s resources are finite. Without an overview of all projects you can end up with bottlenecks and consequently revenue streams are likely to be somewhat delayed. We are living and working in a highly interconnected, dynamic world. Project planning and management, needs to include real-time data from other applications so projects are not delayed. A modern, effective project-centric approach should involve the linking of project planning and project management to day-to-day enterprise applications – applications used by different departments including finance and human resources. Most software development companies are project-based businesses and therefore as I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, project management and planning are vital to their success.

However, I have noticed that many other companies in our sector, have not adopted this integrated approach and therefore are not as efficient as they could be, simply because they cannot accurately plan and manage their projects – i.e. they are unable to forecast and therefore smoothly run their core business. This ultimately impacts on their customers who may find the most appropriately skilled developers are not allocated to their project or their project over-runs.

While implementing new project management software may be painful and disruptive, the benefits it can deliver to a business mean it is generally worth doing. And the sooner you do it, the longer you will reap the benefits for. Your project manager, armed with the appropriate tools should be your ‘knight in shining armour’, enabling you to plan accurately and manage smoothly.

Many of the technology and business stories about the Winter Olympics comment on these being the most ‘connected’ games ever with spectators and competitors alike tweeting, posting, face-timing etc., non-stop. I read that even the competitors have brought three connected devices each to Sochi and are busy downloading apps and sending selfies and the like home.

It seems that BYOD is now as much a part of our lives, in and out of work, as the internet is. In fact, according to research from Egnyte, 65 percent of employees identify their mobile phones as their most relied-upon device for work.

This uptake of BYOD should be having a massive knock-on effect on mobile enterprise apps. However while smartphones, tablets, and the like do improve user productivity, existing software is still largely focused on delivering information, rather than enabling users to perform tasks more complex than emailing and web surfing, that business users require like CRM analysis.

For their part, business users are shouting for mobile versions of more enterprise applications, yet the availability of such apps remains very limited. It seems that the organisations these business users work for are often slow to adopt or create them.

However, I believe that this will soon change. Manufacturers, enterprise app providers, and mobile app developers are beginning to work together with the goal of creating devices that have popular enterprise mobile apps factory-installed.

It also seems that working with device and network providers, enterprise application companies are beginning to provide easier access to their application marketplace. This too will result in employees being able buy and download mobile business applications on their own devices.

As I have written previously, enterprises app stores are also growing in popularity, and will continue to do so as they fill two gaps in the market: employees who want custom-built or tailored business applications that they cannot find on a public app store and IT departments who are not comfortable with the public distribution model of certain applications.

BYOD is having another interesting impact on IT departments. Employees are demanding the same capabilities, flexibility and personalisation they get on their mobile devices for the desktop devices, putting IT departments under increasing pressure to further customize their business software.

So, as BYOD matures it is becoming another driver of demand for mobile application development. Enterprise apps now have to work with many, many different devices inside and outside the corporate network and this is fuelling growth in global class computing.

To date most of the discussion around BYOD has centred on IT department policy, productivity and security. However BYOD has many other implications. For example, the ability to access the corporate network anywhere, anytime, from any device has a massive impact on the applications on that network. A BYOD strategy also has to cover the architecture of these applications. Designing applications to meet the demands of BYOD is certainly not the same as setting usage policies or drafting sourcing plans.

Taking a holistic view, BYOD extends beyond policies. It should be a design ethos that delivers a vendor-neutral, flexible application portfolio. Conversely, if the applications that should be accessible to myriad devices are technically constrained and consequently limit choice and usage, then any purchasing or other policy is a waste of time.

So BYOD does have a very real impact on software developers. No longer are they creating apps that will be used purely by employees who are forced to adhere to the standards and control set by the IT department. Rather they have to develop applications that work with many, many different devices inside and outside the corporate network.

Developing apps to meet this breadth of users is considered part of global class computing. Essentially it is about designing systems and architectures that extend computing processes outside the business and into the cultures of the consumer, mobile worker and supplier. The approach allows for the fact that users will be accessing these applications anywhere, anytime and from any device, and therefore they need to be designed to truly optimise the network infrastructure.

If you are developing apps that are BYOD compliant – am I sure many of us will be in the very near future – 6 key points to consider are:

• Security
• Authentication
• Native v Web
• Screen size
• Active Directory-less and Group Policy-less
• Networking

…and of course the user expectation that apps will look consumer. Good luck and do get in touch to share any tips you have.

However, when it comes to testing, a highly specialised and complex task, this approach can lead to numerous issues.

What are crowdsourced testing services?

Crowdsourced testing, often termed “crowd testing,” is an efficient, budget-friendly strategy that involves sending out tests to a diverse group of people globally.

This isn’t just about cutting costs; it’s an effective way to get feedback from a broad spectrum of users, ensuring the software works well on various devices and systems. It’s especially handy when there’s a test that can’t be fully automated or when there’s a sudden need to ramp up testing efforts.

However, this doesn’t mean it’s time to say goodbye to in-house QA teams. These professionals have a solid grasp of the product, aligned with the company’s vision. But sometimes, they might not catch all the quirky bugs that could pop up in different environments – that’s where crowd testing shines.

It’s all coordinated by crowdsourced testing companies, who make sure the right mix of people is testing the software, matching the company’s specific needs.

The power of the crowd extends to specialised testing areas. In functional testing, the experts scrutinise your software against your business requirements, looking for bugs.

Usability testing is a real-world investigation into user-friendliness, with immediate feedback from a diverse user base. For localisation testing, native speakers from your target market can best assess language accuracy and cultural appropriateness.

Quantifiable benefits of employing crowd testing in your QA strategy

Integrating crowd testing into a QA strategy presents several tangible advantages. One of the benefits is that it can speed up the overall process. By having multiple testers examine different aspects of the product concurrently, the testing duration is reduced.

Additionally, parallel testing ensures hardware diversity since the product is checked on various devices, including those that might not be immediately accessible to the company.

In terms of testing cost, crowd testing services are economical, especially for organisations with limited QA teams, as it means that you don’t have to hire additional permanent staff. This approach allows in-house teams to focus on complex issues while crowdsourced testers handle simpler tasks, efficiently utilising human resources.

Also, crowd testing exposes products to real-world testing conditions, which are not replicable in lab settings and, therefore, help to identify potential blind spots.

The technique also provides unbiased and diverse viewpoints throughout the development process, which is valuable for recognising overlooked issues. It is a versatile method that helps handle increased testing demands during peak times or multiple project phases.

Comparing traditional QA vs Crowdsourced testing: what makes the latter stand out?

When it comes to testing, crowdsourced process has some advantages over traditional QA. Firstly, it offers great flexibility by providing access to testers around the clock, which is especially useful when working with tight deadlines or during off-hours.

In addition, crowdsourced testing brings a diverse range of people with different backgrounds and perspectives together to offer valuable insights that may not be available with an in-house team. Thanks to its global reach, this approach can uncover bugs that only appear in specific environments or on certain devices.

It can also be a real money-saver, especially when you have tests that cannot be automated or when you need to increase your testing efforts quickly. It’s also essential to keep in mind the importance of usability testing – one of the specialisations we mentioned before.

With crowdsourcing, you can have real people who have never used your product before trying it out, which can be invaluable for assessing its user-friendliness.

Find out more about the different testing services (and types of testing) tailored to your needs:

• What is software audit and why is it performed

• What is a vulnerability assessment and how to identify security vulnerabilities?

• What is penetration testing and how pentesting works?

• Cloud penetration testing: definition, benefits, and best practices

How to set up your crowd software testing?

When it comes to testing your software, it’s important first to establish your goals and make a plan. Identify what you want to test, the bugs you’re looking for, and the type of feedback you need from professional testers. Once you’ve done that, choose a crowd testing platform that suits your project requirements and budget, such as Global App Testing, Test IO or Crowdsprint.

After you’ve created a plan and selected a platform, you’ll need to bring in skilled testers. You can either use the platform’s own group of experts or gather your team. But here’s a crucial part: you must give them crystal-clear instructions.

Lay out what they should watch out for, how they should go about it, and the kind of feedback you’re looking for. Keep a close eye on the whole process to make sure they stick to the script and everything’s on track.

Once you finish testing, it’s important to carefully review the results and identify any bugs or issues that may have arisen during the process. This information can help you improve your software and make it more reliable.

It’s also a good idea to touch base with your team and express your gratitude for their hard work. Providing feedback and acknowledging their contributions can help foster a strong and effective collaboration for future projects.

Top 5 bugbears (or points to think long and hard on) about crowd testing

Crowd testing is an innovative and useful approach, particularly beneficial for mobile applications and website testing. However, it comes with its own set of challenges that require serious consideration.

#1 Trust and attitude towards crowd testing companies

Well-functioning development and testing teams should work together towards the same goal in an atmosphere of trust and mutual support. Most IT projects, particularly agile ones, will fail without this atmosphere. It takes time to build trust, and employing different random testers through a crowd approach does not allow for this trust to be built.

#2 Communication

Hand in hand with trust goes communication. If communication around expectations, parameters, and feedback is unclear, successful QA is difficult to achieve.

There are multiple communication layers, increasing the chances of losing key messages or points as developers relay information to the project manager, who then passes it on to the testing company, who further emails testers.

#3 Creating a silo

The crowdsourced testing approach may also be considered too siloed for some. Crowd testers are often too far removed from developers to effectively communicate feedback.

So how can the development team learn from its mistakes, understand them and improve? Without a QA team’s close and regular input, developers risk repeating the same mistakes.

Worse still, without that personal, integrated relationship with the testers, perhaps the developers will eventually care less about the quality of their code as faceless crowd checks or “judges” their work.

#4 Understanding the context

In my experience, QAs working on a particular piece of software must have a thorough understanding of the project and its aims to make sensible decisions.

While this understanding doesn’t take too long with small projects, some I have worked on can take months to understand fully. With only a few days to complete all testing, it is unlikely that crowd testers can fully grasp the software’s objectives and nuances.

#5 Quality of the software itself

Crowd testing claims to provide feedback on hundreds of issues within just two days. While this is much faster than what the average QA team can deliver, the sheer number of issues that are detected raises some concerning questions about the software that was sent to the crowd testers.

How can there be so many issues? This suggests that the development and testing process is inadequate. Poor-quality software indicates that the developers and project managers working on the software may not be prioritising the quality of their work.

It is possible that there may be some underlying issues within the company that simply outsourcing the software testing to crowdsourced testers will not solve.

How to mitigate potential pitfalls in your crowd testing journey?

Successfully navigating the intricacies of crowdsourced testing requires a keen eye for potential pitfalls and a plan to overcome them. Read on to learn about the effective strategies to help you tackle the challenges.

1. Security Concerns: Cyber resiliance is a critical concern when it comes to protecting your systems and testing your applications. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by implementing non-disclosure agreements, confidentiality contracts, and other measures to restrict access to sensitive information and ensure it remains protected.

2. Risk Management: Crowdsourced testing services can be risky if the processes are poorly designed or executed. This may lead to subpar submissions or confusion about the project’s objectives. To avoid these issues, establish a detailed process for the initiative, emphasising proper planning, execution, and management. If you want to find out more, read about information security risk assessment.

3. Addressing Biases and Skill Gaps: The nature of crowd testing can lead to biases and skill gaps, which may affect outcomes. Proactive planning, robust processes, and diligent management can address these challenges.

4. Pilot Testing: Before fully integrating crowd testing service, consider conducting a pilot test to detect and address potential issues on a smaller scale. This approach helps mitigate risks that could affect the end product or its users.

5. Choosing the Right Crowd Testers: The selection of testers is critical. It’s important to understand the criteria used in their selection and to assess their expertise and experience to ensure they meet the project’s requirements.

6. Constant Control and Monitoring: To achieve successful outcomes, continuous oversight and monitoring of testers’ activities is crucial throughout the test cycles.

Embracing the power of the crowd in quality assurance

Crowdsourced QA testing strikes a unique balance in the world of product evaluation. Imagine extending the scope beyond your in-house team to include a global network of testers.

This isn’t just about numbers; it’s about enriching the testing process with diverse insights, making the bug-spotting game incredibly thorough.

This scale not only broadens test coverage but also brings a plethora of devices and operating systems into play, all without the hefty overhead costs. The financial aspect is just as appealing – you invest in more testers only when there’s a real need, keeping things cost-effective.

So, why not turn testing from a chore into an adventure? Embrace the crowd and watch your software evolve, not just in functionality but in global appeal and user satisfaction.

However, remain aware of potential pitfalls and take necessary precautions to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the testing results.

The future is always very hard to predict. Take Steve Ballmer for example. The outgoing CEO of Microsoft is regularly asked for predictions, which he gamely gives, but often gets wrong. In the mid-noughties he blithely stated: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” Just a couple of years ago he said that Microsoft would probably license around 20 million Windows Mobile devices in that year. Unfortunately the company still has managed to achieve that target.

While I am comforted that even the ‘greats’ get it wrong, like the SEC, I remain rather wary of making sweeping future-looking statements. So, to see what might be affecting us in the future, I think it best to start by looking at the recent past and where we are today.

The last few years have been an interesting time for the IT outsourcing industry, posing several challenges. Before the recession really bit end-user companies were increasingly outsourcing for reasons besides cost and the industry was evolving fast. However – most notably for smaller companies – the cost issue became paramount again during the recession. With headcounts frozen at many organisations software offshoring often ended up as bodyshopping. The economic uncertainty that lingers in many countries means it hasn’t been easy for smaller developers to move away from this.

At the same time, some countries that are established IT outsourcers – like India – continue to face rising costs, notably around wages. Handling these cost pressures is a key challenge for offshore developers today, especially when their customers are still operating in dampened economic conditions.

While we so many countries are still struggling out of the constraint of recession, their politicians will continue to talk about protectionism as we have seen in the US. While no new laws may actually be passed, protectionist talk does nothing to help mature the industry or its image. Combating negative public perception of offshoring is something that trade associations like the NOA, with its Outsourcing Works project, are dealing with now.

Looking a little further ahead, the effects of consumers’ insatiable demand for mobile apps are, quite literally, streaming down to our industry. Companies are outsourcing the development of these apps. While it’s great that the industry is benefiting from this new business stream, mobile applications are generally very inexpensive to purchase and are also made inexpensively. Recognising the true value of the development work that goes into a mobile application is a hot challenge for the industry and one that I think will continue for at least a couple of years, as analysts predict no let up in the growth of mobile apps.

The essence of both the challenge of creating mobile applications at a viable cost and the perception challenge is ‘essentially’ the same. They both boil down to getting the customer-offshore supplier relationship right. This relationship remains the lynchpin of any successful outsourcing project. Personally I think that maintaining and evolving this relationship is the biggest challenge for the industry in the next few years. Without it outsourcing deals will fail and the industry will suffer from a truly tarnished reputation.

It’s a one-year training programme that starts with a three-month technology induction course. This is followed by six months of on-the-job training with Wipro teams. Students will then spend three months working on real-life projects. Of course, the training takes place in India.

Twenty candidates were selected for the programme in May this year. They all have an engineering degree or were about to complete one and had to prove their mathematical ability. The candidates have just begun their course, arriving in India for their three-month technology induction course a few weeks ago.

Wipro is not the only Indian firm offering training to UK graduates. HCL is working with 12 universities to provide workshops on technology and management, as well as running competitions to drive innovation. At the same time Infosys has announced over 100 UK apprenticeship places over the next five years, through a programme set up jointly with the National Apprenticeship Scheme (NAS).

You may wonder why these companies are doing this. Well apart from being a great public relations exercise for firms that suffer from a poor public perception, they are also training valuable talent. All these companies are increasing their operations in the UK and therefore they need local talent. These programmes will help provide this.

At Future Processing we also offer workshops at local universities, run competitions like Deadline24 and we have a strong track record in employing technical graduates during the summer holidays. My experience is that this sort of initiative really does help improve standards in the industry, while at the same time making recruitment much easier. I think the Indian outsourcers are on to a winner.

Most of the analysis of the report in the media has centred around the fact that because the economic slowdown in China continued for longer than expected, and because of public sector spending cuts around the world, IT spending has slowed. In the, IDC lowered its forecast for worldwide IT spending to 4.6% growth this year, down from a May projection of 4.9% growth. IDC also reduced its IT spending forecast for China to 9.5% growth this year. Its May projection was 12.9% growth.

But while some commentators agonised over the impact of China on the global economy, two other findings from the research caught my eye:

First – mobile devices are not seeing the same slowdown as the rest of the hardware industry. In fact IDC has revised its growth projections upwards in this area. It now forecasts worldwide spending on tablet computers will increase 6.5% to 39.0% this year. At the same time, spending on smartphones is expected to rise 18.5%, increasing from the May projection of 17.2%.

Second – software is also unaffected by the overall hardware underperformance. According to the IDC report, software spending, including software as a service, is expected to grow by 5.5% this year, unchanged from its previous forecast. Growth in traditional packaged software remains sluggish, though, compared to cloud-based models. In fact IDC predicts that by the end of this year, almost 10.0% of total software spending will have moved to the cloud.

As the consumerisation of enterprise IT continues apace, these trends are and will continue to impact IT departments and their supplier partners. To me they reinforce the belief of other analyst firms: that BYOD and BYOA are not going away. This means IT departments need to invest even more heavily in mobile, cloud-based development expertise – be that in-house or outsourced.