Question

Hi..

I found an answer to this question on the site but I want a more detailed answer, especially in the question about (estimated associated costs) .. I want to choose the strategy of outsourcing, is it possible to help me in writing a report on them and why I chose it and what are the disadvantages and advantages of this approach compared to the approach of in-house with existing staff?

This is the Question:
. Imagine that you are the head of information technology for a fast-growth e-commerce start- up. You are in charge of development of the company’s Web site. Consider your options for building the site in-house with existing staff or outsourcing the entire operation. Decide which strategy you believe is in your company’s best interest and create a brief presentation outlining your position. Explain why you chose that approach? What are the estimated associated costs, compared with the alternative? (You’ll need to make some educated guesses here—don’t worry about being exact.)

My subject is E-commerce , but it did not appears in the options

Thank you for your efforts

Answer 1

Hi,

Please find the answer below:

There are several phases involved in developing a website:

• Website Planning.
• Website design.
• Website development.
• Testing
• Website maintenance.

Deciding on the options to develop website in-house or outsource depends on factors like

• Organizational capabilities -
• Employee Skills - Does the company have employees with website development skills and experience?
• Human resources - Do we have enough employees to build a large website.
• Hosting capabilities, - Does the company have infrastructure to host a website. ( for example : Data Center with 24/7 Power backup etc)
• Website Budget and Timelines.
• Hardware & Software - Load Balancer, Application servers (Webshpere, JBoss etc. Database server Oracle , MySQL, DB2 etc. Java/JSP etc.

Software sizing -

• Website small,
• medium size or
• large enterprise size.

Nature of Website:

• Website with static pages or dynamic pages.
• Dynamic pages can be generated using technologies like JSP, ASP.NET etc.

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Estimated costs of Website development:

Outsourcing costs

• Domain name charges.( we need to buy a domain to host the website from the domain providers like GoDaddy, Google etc.)
• Hosting annual charges - Linux/ Windows / C-Panel etc.( hosting website on Hosting providers , in company's datacenters etc. )
• Data backups.
• Website builder/ CMS - Wordpress, Drupal or JSP/HTML pages etc.
• Software costs depends on the open source or proprietary tools.
• Software Tools- License costs. ( Database servers, Programming tools, servers )
• Note that many tools have open source alternatives)
• Search Engine optimization ( Making your website visible to search engines)

In-house development costs

Costs involved in building website in-house involves the salaries of the employees who work on the website project, costs of tools, license costs, hardware costs, infrastructure costs like data center power backup etc)

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There are many critical factors that decide the option to build the website in house or outsource the website. For example, if the company doesn't have hosting infrastructure the best option is to outsource the website to a third party vendor.

Hope this helps.