The current wave in software development is of outsourcing. This is an era where internet access is cheaper than anything else. The cost of talented people is very high preceded by the cost of hardware. It takes real money to buy and maintain a server even if the software is open source. To hire a coder, it takes still lot of money. By outsourcing one can significantly reduce the cost of manpower as people in developing countries like India, China are available for lesser price tag.

But there is a catch. Find the right company in a far off country, managing the entire process it not an easy job. It’s a job that probably only Fortune 1000 companies can manage. It requires specialized people who can help you to outsource you work. And despite of that, infrastructure costs still remain.

How does one get the benefits of outsourcing to small sized or medium sized companies? How can we reduce the overheads of outsourcing and hardware/software cost?

8KMiles.com is a new company which (I dare say) the first company to address these questions. It helps buyers and providers to search and meet each other. There are so many sites that do that. But 8KMiles doesn’t stop there. It provides a virtual computing environment (VCE) where with few clicks one can hire machines with the development environments installed and configured for you. Just a matter of few clicks and a little of money, of course. 8KMiles makes cloud computing easier to access for anyone.

8KMiles provide a host of tools and services that not only benefit Buyers and Providers but also help Service Brokers and Project Managers to use their skills and make money. With the help of these tools, 8KMiles rises above all the freelancing websites and turns itself into and ecosystem for software development. We can have virtual teams each member being geographically separated but working on the same project, managed by some project manager who too is accordingly chosen.

Thus a buyer gets freedom to choose people of his choice and a provider gets freedom to work on his terms. For a small business the benefit is immense. It can chose people based on budget and skills, without bothering too much about the logistics of outsourcing. It can choose every team member and form a virtual team, quickly setup a VCE and get the team productive in minutes. If required it can hire a project manager too who will ensure quality of deliverables and timeliness. All the participants on 8KMiles need to get their identity verified, which ensures trust. The payment methods are secure and flexible.
As companies start to grow beyond the survival threshold, they face the dire need to optimize their processes. They have to find the right resources with minimum costs while maximizing the quality of deliverables. They have to leverage upon every aspect that will help them to get an edge over their competitors. Outsourcing was one such way invented to score in this completion. With 8KMiles innovative and revolutionizing model (yet simple), one can further optimize on the outsourcing model. Can it be called Smartsourcing ?