The unique advantage of outsourcing for open source development

Outsourcing their software development brings companies and organizations a lot of advantages, especially in a digitally-driven volatile environment with a lot of change happening fast (i.e. what we’ve been experiencing for over 4 years now).

Let’s begin with a quick breakdown of some of the most important advantages of outsourcing software development needs before focusing on the one this article is dedicated to.

  • Flexibility: outsourcing development allows you to up/downsize according to current needs without having to worry about in-house specific issues such as team overhead and firing/hiring. This is a particularly important benefit in a fast-moving environment that requires a quicker time to market while also accounting for future uncertainties and unpredictabilities.

  • Reliability: partnering with proven service providers whom you have likely also thoroughly vetted yourself brings an additional layer of reliability to your development process. Thanks to the flexibility provided by outsourcing, this can lead to fruitful long-term partnerships that are adaptable and much more risk-free.

  • Readymade team: you’re able to easily acquire just one or two extra team members, or get a full development team, potentially led by the partner’s project management, depending on project/business needs. On top of that, you get to decide how much control you want to keep over the entire process, as well as having full control of the resulting intellectual property.

  • Specific skill sets: with outsourcing, you can quickly get the skills in the specific technologies you require without having to up/reskill in-house and/or spend time and resources hiring for the right skill sets. This becomes even more important when the demand for top development talent rises.

 

The unique advantage of developing with open source software

When it comes to development with open source software, there is an additional significant advantage of outsourcing development services: your partner agency’s active involvement in and contribution to the open source project in question, and the extra hands-on experience their developers gain from that.

Having easy access to developers who are involved in an active open source community such as Drupal gives a unique upper hand, since these developers are close to and familiar with best practices, interacting more with other developers, often also working on new custom contributed features and/or their own custom project(s) based on the software.

This kind of degree of involvement and collaboration is not possible with proprietary/closed source software which is not freely available to the public. When your digital strategy includes open source technologies, outsourcing gives you fast and easy access to a broad pool of exactly the talent you seek.

Such an important competitive advantage is thus an excellent incentive for agencies/service providers working with open source software to give back to the projects that they use.

Have your team members contribute by working on important initiatives and custom solutions, getting featured on open source conferences as well as speaking at smaller external and internal events. Even non-developer team members are often able to easily find ways to get involved by helping out with design, marketing, event organization, etc.

 

Final thoughts

While outsourcing content production to marketing agencies may be a less popular strategy now due to widespread use of generative AI, outsourcing software development continues to be a viable avenue, with demand for custom solutions and integrations becoming even higher thanks to this GenAI explosion.

Many popular open source technologies are also taking this into account with their own AI integrations and solutions for creating AI-powered experiences. The businesses based on these open source platforms stand to benefit even more from them by making use of outsourcing for their development needs.

If you’re currently looking for a development partner that specializes in open source technologies, check out our technology stack and/or reach out to us directly if you’d like to learn more about how we can help you out.

Posted by Tim on 24 Jul 2024 in Business