Rebuilding the Silk Road How New Technologies are Enabling a Global Software Services Market

Author

Josh Steiner

Date of Award

2004

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

Henckell, Karsten

Keywords

Outsourcing, Software, India, Technology, Economics

Area of Concentration

Natural Sciences

Abstract

New technologies, by implementing new standards of communication and engineering of software projects, are reducing the transaction costs of the importation of software services from low wage countries such as India. Three of these new technologies are explained and evaluated: I. XML web services are removing the importance for collocation of colleagues by providing an efficient standard of communication between computers over the Internet. 2. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) enables workers to communicate architecture of software projects with a standard set of diagrams, improving communication via document swapping and decreasing the likelihood of misunderstandings due to language and cultural differences. 3. The Capability Maturity Model (CMM), by providing detailed prescriptions for the correct processes involved in software development, is streamlining communication between different companies aware of these processes. As new technology pushes the outsourcing trend forward, other forces are working to limit it. Increasing demand for Indian software workers is putting upward pressure on wages and the value of the Rupee against the dollar. The Indian government is doing its best to control these factors, however they have little influence on US public opinion, and new advocacy groups and unions are beginning to sway US policy against outsourcing.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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