J.D. Edwards Develops Off-Shore Partnership With Covansys

The overseas developers will focus on quality assurance, testing and maintenance of code, working in tandem with J.D. Edwards' domestic team of software engineers and architects who will concentrate on strategic development and adding higher functionality to the software, according to the companies.

Of course, economics is motivating the move offshore. Denver-based J.D. Edwards said that they are aiming to reduce time to market and slash costs associated with the development of new software products. Working in their favor: polar-opposite time zones in the U.S. and India that will help to fuel a near-24/7 development operation and much cheaper labor in India that will reduce J.D. Edwards' operational costs. On the productivity end alone the addition of the Convansys developers is expected to bump up J.D. Edwards' testing capabilities by 30 percent, officials said.

The software vendor is hardly alone. Offshore outsourcing has taken on a life of its own and given a big boost to Indian software developers -- while the economy here in the United States has flagged. Convansys, based in Farmington Hills, Mich., is among a handful of large IT consulting firms and integrators, including InfoSys and Wipro Technologies that run full-scale development operations in India

The trend is controversial, with anxious developers here losing jobs to a much cheaper labor pool overseas. Among Covansys' other clients that outsource offshore are Henry Ford Health Systems, IBM and UNUMProvident.