A [graphic] table of offshare salaries supplied by Cognizant gives the following rates:

'Thousands of dollars per year'
---------
Average $7
Engineering and design $8
Data Search, integration and analysis $4
Web site services $7
Software $13
Remote network consulting and management $14
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http://www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,2610817,00.html
Bridging gaps offshore
Face time boosts a project's chance of success
By Lisa Vaas, eWEEK
August 7, 2000 12:00 AM ET

Leaping national borders in search of technology talent is a tried-and-true
tool of U.S. business, but the physical separation that goes with it has
often worked against the goals of lower costs and a more global work force.
Now, companies are finding new ways to stay connected with foreign
operations and keep their businesses from flying apart.
Offshore outsourcers like Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. have come up
with a hybrid model that both exploits lower offshore salaries by having the
lion's share of programmers working in India and yet also puts 30 percent to
35 percent of a project team on-site. That ensures that clients such as
Hewitt Associates LLC get the one thing that can make or break a project:
face time with Cognizant's team members, including a staff that deals with
project management and ongoing requirements management and refining. Those
team members, in turn, hook up with India team members via a private voice
and video network that runs on satellite and fiber-optic lines.

Is it working to ease separation anxiety at Hewitt? Absolutely, according to
Joe Kane, application development manager at Hewitt, the largest provider of
benefits outsourcing services in the United States.
"Fortunately, the offshore model has evolved over the last few years," said
Kane, in Lincolnshire, Ill. "[Cognizant is] not only working with us during
the day but also coordinating at night when it's daytime in India to make
sure we're all in the loop."
Ironically enough, Hewitt, the United States' largest benefits outsourcer,
is touchy about the connotations of its move to outsource application
development. Why? Because all too often, internal ITers equate it with the
most unpleasant separation anxiety of all: layoffs. "We don't like to use
the word 'outsourcing' around this," Kane said. "We're not eliminating
positions or work at Hewitt. Rather, it's a growth strategy. [It amounts
to,] How do we keep up with the demands for applications?"
Without face-to-face time, remote projects are dead in the water, experts
say. After all, as pointed out by Norm Matloff, a computer science professor
at the University of California at Davis, in spite of the current
sophistication of collaboration software, companies such as Northwest
Airlines Inc., as recently as last fall, complained that time-zone
differences and language barriers made offshore outsourcing more trouble
than it's worth.
This inability of team members to part from one another's sides is what
keeps companies huddled together in areas such as Silicon Valley, Matloff
said. "You just can't manage software projects over the phone, or in e-mail
or teleconferencing, etc.," he said. "Otherwise ... everyone in Silicon
Valley would telecommute, instead of driving through those awful traffic
jams. Why aren't they working from home? The answer is that you need that
face-to-face contact."
Despite the need for person-to-person contact, many e-businesses have no
choice but to look offshore, analysts report. "We see dot-coms look to
offshore providers because, honest to God, they can't attract talent in this
area," said Richard Brewer, an analyst at International Data Corp., in
Framingham, Mass. "Their needs are a little more immediate [than those of
established companies]. They're willing to suffer the project management and
communication hurdles because they have venture capitalists to satisfy with
delivery dates."
And with new hybrid models of outsourcing such as Cognizant's on-site/
offshore model, those e-businesses may turn out to be poised to leap those
hurdles.