Software Firm Orange And Bronze Puts Importance In Developing Filipino Talent
A company named Orange & Bronze sounds like it's a marketing or public relations firm, or maybe a furniture company. It is actually a Filipino software development firm that takes pride in its young and dynamic workforce.
- (1888PressRelease) October 19, 2010 - Headed by Calen Legaspi, Orange & Bronze has grown leaps and bounds developing applications for domestic and foreign clients.
The group hires an entirely Filipino software development and training staff, many of them fresh graduates or young software developers with very specific skill sets catering to each of the projects they make.
From just a few developers and trainers in 2005, the company has grown to about 90 and continues to add more manpower into the fold. While many of them are in the software development division of O&B, the rest are software development trainers focusing on Java application and on Android, Google's operating system for mobile devices.
O&B's office is actually an apartment in one of the condo-type buildings in Makati City. Cubicles are nowhere to be found and instead, computers are laid on long tables where everyone see what each one is doing.
There are spots where the developers can lie down to rest. In fact, the entire office looks more like a dormitory than an office, with the exception of some rooms dedicated to their training services.
Legaspi stressed that the employees have to feel that they are working for themselves rather than working 9 to 5 jobs, thus the dorm-like layout of the office. He said some of the workers can even come in late and leave for home early as long as their assigned activities are completed.
"They have to be given that sense of freedom because that way, they can think more creatively with their work and be more proactive," Legaspi said.
With a number of software development firms based in the Philippines that are competing in the same outsourcing segment, O&B strives to be on a different level by adopting the Agile methodology, a widely used process of creating software using variables ensuring the reliability its application over different information technology systems.
The Agile system also ensures that further development can be done on the application by different teams due to the adoption of a familiar software development process.
"We realized that software development is not just about creating what a client wants but also making sure that the software can be used over the long term. Additional upgrades on the software can be done by different teams because they are familiar with the process on how the software was created," Legaspi said.
Legaspi, who started out offering his services through online technology forums, said the software development outsourcing business for Filipino firms could have a huge potential, though this is dependent on how local firms can adopt globally accepted development processes.
He noted that foreign firms looking to outsource software development usually require outsourcers to adopt a creation methodology, which ensures that the purpose-built software remains useful after several years and after several upgrades.
Legaspi, who also sits as a board director of the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA), said that the recent economic crisis has forced foreign firms to be more strict with the outsource projects that they require.
The Philippine software industry, he added, is poised to offer quality services to the US market, which is slowly recovering from the crisis.
In fact, the PSIA is hoping to cash in on the outsourced software development business from the US market, despite having lackluster revenue growth in 2009. Last year, the PSIA reported that the Philippine software industry generated US$568 million, a 5 percent decrease from the previous year where it earned US$601 million.
Still, Legaspi said that there are still more opportunities for smaller Philippine software development firms to take when the US economy continues in its recovery in the coming years.
"We have a lot of good talent in the Philippines. We only need to train them to meet the requirements of the global software development market when recovery happens," Legaspi said.
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