near•shore ['nirˌ'shȯr]
proper noun.
1.Form of outsourcing that refers to services delivered from an adjacent or nearby location.
The concept of nearshore was first coined by Softtek in 1997 (through its Near Shore® model) as it began to do work with its first U.S. clients. With time, the world has come to understand the concept as delegating outsourcing business processes and technology support to companies in a nearby country—primarily US companies partnering with Canadian and Mexican companies and Western European countries partnering with Eastern European countries.
The popularity of the Share the Sun workflow model has reemerged during the pandemic as organizations hunt for qualified technology talent with shared time-zone proximity. In contrast to the Follow the Sun model, where distributed teams keep development activities going around the clock, the Share the Sun model leverages a synchronous workflow strategy, giving teams the benefit of real-time collaboration. While a real-time partnership might not always be required, distributed teams who Share the Sun have been shown to successfully replicate the physical in-office experience when live teamwork is required. Simply put, Agile teams get more done when they share the sun.
Amidst the most disruptive time in modern history and intensified by the pandemic, the enterprise continues to expedite intelligent enterprise fitness. As a result, the demand for specialized IT, software development, and analytics technology partners will continue to rise. For this reason, technology and business leaders will continue to reevaluate their technology partnerships and look for future-fit partners that can help their organizations quickly scale.
Nearshore agility at scale
In 2021, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations large and small have proved distributed agile teams can successfully operate at peak maturity when certain conditions are met. Specifically, distributed agile teams can thrive when they share similar time zones to enable real-time, albeit remote, communication.
Softtek is a global company and the largest provider of IT services from Latin America. With a broad portfolio of business-transforming products and solutions, Softtek helps Global 2000 organizations evolve their digital capabilities constantly and seamlessly, from ideation and development to execution.