The IBP-Based Forum in the iTech Bridge Sourcing Portal is Released

iTech Bridge Company buys a license on the Invision Power Service’s IPB tool usage for professional social networking in the portal, which focuses on information support of the global high- tech R&D and IT service sourcing market.

iTech Bridge portal(www.itechbridge.com) targets mainly outsourcing in small to mid-sized entrepreneurial(SME) niche.

“We have selected the Invision Power Board (IPB) of the Invision Power Service because this product is one of most advanced forum applications for implementation of the portal’s objectives”, says Anatoliy D. Milner, iTech Bridge president and project leader.

To figure out a place of the project that IPB occupies in the iTech Bridge, you need to understand the iTech Bridge model. It is based on four professional related concepts: social networking, news and knowledge aggregation, resource marketplace, resource marketplace, offshoring placement & consulting services.

“Usually, people meet first; then, their companies meet. By bringing people together, we hope to bring companies together”, Anatoliy Milner is talking about social networking. “Is there anything that professionals from different high-tech industries have in common? We believe there is. Among those things are the issues of career opportunities, good and bad sides of offshoring, intellectual property, marketing, project management, etc. We provide the opportunity for engineers and scientists of cutting-edge technologies to communicate with one another in a fast, effective, and spam-free environment. It is especially beneficial if specialists work for startups where everyone is responsible for everything. Here, at our portal, you can discuss the above topics and many more, some of which may or may not even relate directly to your profession. For example, you can change opinions about new movie you saw or a book you are thinking of reading”.

The iTech Bridge leader continues to talk about the next portal concept – the news and knowledge aggregation. “In the world filled with facts, events, analytics, statistics, studies, surveys how do you make sure that you are not overwhelmed and that you only get information that related to you? We are turning data into information. Professionals can switch from Goggle news service to us to reduce the number of irrelevant responses. We use modern ways of news syndication (RSS stream), filtering, user generated and ranked of content, news alert, timesaving format. Both content editors and users pick our news stories and knowledge items”.

“In order to navigate current competitive market and evaluate correctly where the market is going to, you need reliable leads of major players on the market as well as information about projects under implementation, and available resources”, Roman Khmil, vice-president of the prominent USA-India’s GlobalLogic, Inc. said about the resource marketplace concept, “iTech Bridge helps find this type information by providing us with the database of available resources”.

“A worldwide pool of professionals is a useful marketing information. This type of information also allows you to narrow down your search to find exactly what you are looking for. If you know a potential partner well, you can use iTech Bridge even for small project contracting”, Mykola Krasnostup, CEO & co-founder of Information Security Center Ltd, Ukraine, iTech Bridge user, remarked.

“When the project is too big and you need to evaluate outsourcing service providers, you either choose to meet with these partners in person or you can also use the iTech Bridge offshoring placement & consulting agency. This agency specializes in finding suitable resources for your needs and can help you evaluate yours or your company experience and skills and later find you appropriate project(s)”, Anatoliy Milner added.

The company says that IPB based iTech Bridge forum carry out two tasks: main and technological. “The first task is a classical one for any social networking implementation. It is simply a communication environment”, Anatoliy Milner explains. “In all the next versions of the portal, this environment will remain to be the same. For the technological task, we are interesting in IPB tool as a means for building an acting prototype of the iTech Bridge commerce edition. By using this testing area, we plan to check our concept of news and knowledge aggregation as well as to gain effective feedback from our users.”

About the iTech Bridge Company

The Beverly, MA’s startup is founded by the IT specialists who have extensive computer engineering, software development, and publishing experience in both Ukraine and the United States. The company is a member of the Silicon Taiga alliance (Russia). The company’s president works also as the representative of the Ukrainian Association of Software Developers (UASWD) in the USA.

About the Invision Power Service

The Virginia, USA based company is a leading provider of site and community-building products and services. With a focus on developing both high quality products and first-class service, it is able to meet the needs of any size business.

A New Release of the iTech Bridge Sourcing Portal is Launched

iTech Bridge Company launches a new version of the international portal that targets SME market of knowledge, development, business process and service sourcing in high- tech area.

Globalization of high-tech research and development (R&D) makes information support of various sourcing processes very important. The main objective of the iTech Bridge portal (www.itechbridge.com) is providing such support, mainly, for offshore outsourcing.

“It is known that in now days, the outsourcing applies not only to core R&D work”, says Anatoliy D. Milner, iTech Bridge president and project leader. “This is the reason why our portal also focuses on other kinds of outsourcing, primarily, such as business process outsourcing (BPO), knowledge process outsourcing (KPO), and application service outsourcing (ASO). The latter one includes the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. In other words, we support outsourcing of all processes in the high-tech area except for manufacturing”.

As far as the R&D projects, the company emphasizes that there are two main distinctive features of the iTech Bridge portal. Firstly, the portal orients not only on resources for software projects but also on projects in other high- tech areas, for example, nanotechnology. “However, despite that fact, at the moment, iTech Bridge pays more attention to information technology”, Anatoliy Milner explained. “There are software and hardware for computers, telecom, and robotics, other horizontal and vertical domains, including OEM ”. For some IT projects, engineering service outsourcing (ESO) may become also important.

Secondly, Anatoliy Milner says, we support not only traditional outsourcing (transferring a project/job/process for implementation by an outside provider) but also in-sourcing and joint-sourcing activities, such as investments, merging and acquisition, other ways of collaboration. “According to our terminology, in-sourcing is transferring project implementation resources (workforce, ideas, and other intellectual properties) from outside. Sourcing processes (outsourcing, in-sourcing, or joint-sourcing) may also include market-oriented engineering”, he explains, “at iTech Bridge, this kind of engineering means finishing development of a product prototype or a local market product, so that it becomes suitable for the wider market (region or even the global market). This is applicable to countries that have a lot of qualified technical and scientific resources but are lacking in ability to market products in an effective way.

“iTech Bridge targets mainly small to mid-sized entrepreneurial(SME) market”, Anatoliy Milner comments. The Beverly, MA based company that he leads, is founded by the IT specialists who have extensive computer engineering, software development, and publishing experience in both Ukraine and the United States. The iTech Bridge Company is a member of the Silicon Taiga alliance (Russia). The company’s president works also as the representative of the Ukrainian Association of Software Developers (UASWD) in the USA. “Naturally, we started from this region”, he said, ’’but currently, the iTech Bridge database consist of almost 700 companies and specialists from more than 25 countries”.

“What attracted us to the iTech Bridge portal is the idea of combining different sourcing processes under one roof”, Simon Moldavskiy, president of UASWD said, “that was the reason why we have decided to support the Portal”.

Creators of iTech Bridge continue to view portal’s versions as pilot editions. According to Anatoliy Milner, a commerce edition of iTech Bridge will be released in the next year. Indian Inkorus Solutions, Inc., a well-known player of the global outsourcing market is developing it. “Anyway, our users may be sure that all new releases will be fully compatible with old ones”, he added.

“We also liked the iTech Bridge model”, Vikas V.Gupta, CEO of Inkorus Solutions , said, “and we agreed to participate in this project. Our company is confident that the new Indian-Ukrainian initiative takes its niche on the competitive high-tech sourcing market. We are also interested in the portal as connection between our company and quickly developing outsourcing market of Eastern Europe.”

In general, the iTech Bridge model is based on four professional related concepts: social networking, news and knowledge aggregation, resource marketplace, resource marketplace, offshoring placement & consulting services.