A New Release of the iTech Bridge Sourcing Portal is Launched

iTech Bridge Company launches a new version of the international portal that targets worldwide 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.

“These days, outsourcing does not only apply 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), including the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. In other words, we support outsourcing of all processes in the high-tech area except for manufacturing”.

In its R&D project orientation, the company emphasizes two main features of the iTech Bridge portal. Firstly, the portal focuses not only on resources for software projects, but also on projects in other high-tech areas—nanotechnology, for example. “However, currently, 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, iTechBridge supports not only 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”, Anatoliy Milner 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, whether that is a regional 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."

The portal targets mainly small to medium enterprises (SME). 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.

The Beverly, MA’s company was founded by IT specialists who have extensive computer engineering, software development, and publishing experience in both Ukraine and the United States. iTech Bridge Company is a member of the Silicon Taiga alliance (Russia). The president of the company, Anatoliy Milner, also works as the representative of the Ukrainian Association of Software Developers (UASWD) in the USA. “Naturally, we started our portal with strong ties to countries of Eastern Europe”, he said, ’’but currently, the iTech Bridge database consists 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, director of UASWD said, “that was the reason why we have decided to support the portal”.

The 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 the commerce edition. Milner assures current users of the portal that all new releases, including the commerce edition, will be fully compatible with old ones.

“We 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.”