Akshay Software International, Inc. has an offsite development facility in USA and a well-equipped offshore development center (ODC) at Bombay, India.

The offshore development center is equipped with latest operating environments including UNIX, Linux, and Windows-NT servers. These servers are secured through firewalls and developers are connected to them in an Intranet with powerful client software. This secure Intranet is connected through a firewall to a dedicated high-speed link to the Internet. The Intranet houses mail, chat, FTP servers to enable quick and secure communication between the offshore team and offsite and the customers’ teams.

Besides, Akshay’s development centers are equipped with latest databases and development tools from ORACLE, IBM and Microsoft to enable us to carry out development in not only on Microsoft, but also on other open platforms such as JAVA. Akshay also has several productivity and testing tools from Rational Rose and QUEST. The facilities are also equipped with configuration and version control tools.

Akshay can also quickly add any specific hardware or software as required for a specific project, if such facility is not already available with it. This is usually done either by hiring these facilities or borrowing them from the customer for the duration of the project. Alternatively, secure connections can be provided to the customer’s system to develop the application on the target system itself.



Akshay has a strong system administration team that maintains these hardware, software and communication network up and running for a 24x7 operation.




Currently, Akshay has executed projects by establishing a secure Extranet (Intranet using firewalls and Internet as the communication mode). This mode of communication has been successfully used in complex and sensitive projects for clients in Europe and USA including remote login. The following diagram depicts this communication model.






Akshay has a strong development team. The team has been selected with care, with emphasis on educational background, relevant experience and strong interpersonal skills to work as a cogent team. The individual team members undergo regular training on the latest technologies and many of them have undergone certification process from the technology vendors.

Appropriate backups are provided at the project manager/ team lead positions and redundancies are built into the team structure to ensure continuity as well as to take care of contingencies. This also ensures on time delivery.

A separate document on specific skill sets is provided.

Akshay also has a separate quality team that inspects every deliverable that goes to the customer. Right from the specification documents through the test plan and test results. It is also in charge of ensuring that backups and version controls are maintained.




Akshay has evolved proven and written down Project Management methodologies out of its 2500 person years of software development experience, covering the entire development life cycle. This project methodology is certified for ISO-9001:2000 by KPMG and is audited on a yearly basis for its compliance.



Processes: The above diagram depicts the life cycle stages adopted by Akshay in executing any project including offshore development projects.

Each of the above stages has defined deliverables (in terms of adequate documentation and well tested code, where applicable). These are reviewed or tested by an independent internal quality team before delivery to Customer. Quality Systems are central to the development process at Akshay.

The processes ensure that Akshay can not only carry out new software development on an offshore mode, but also take up tasks such as maintenance, bug fixes, customization (of products to suit different needs) and multi-platform support.

Team: When Akshay undertakes offshore projects on a total responsibility basis, it designates an US based Project Manager who will be at its New Jersey office or in some cases, even stationed at the Customer site based on project needs. This project manager will interface the offshore development process and make the offshore project management transparent to the Customer. Thus, the Customer will interact mainly with the US based Project Manager for all status and other project related information without having to directly interact with the offshore team. The Customer has access to the offshore team for any technical issues through email, chat and/or telephone/fax.

If needed, the designated offshore project manager, will visit Customer site to understand the application, source code (where applicable), standards of specification and the development environment.

One of the salient features of the team structure is the designation of one of the team members as an associate project leader. Associate Project Leader basically attends all the project meetings and has all the information as that of a Project Leader. He acts as a backup for the Project Leader. This helps to maintain reliability of the team.

Communication: Among the first things Akshay ensures in an offshore development model is to replicate the exact development environment at its offshore development center. This ensures that the source code compile and execute without any problem at the Customer site or at the offshore center, enabling smooth exchange of deliverables for development as well as for maintenance.

The next agenda is to establish data communication links between Customer site and the ODC to create a virtual project environment. This enables Akshay team to jointly work with Customer team to exchange documentation, update status, perform version and configuration management and deliver documentation and source code. Currently, Akshay has a secure Extranet (Intranet using firewalls and Internet as the communication mode) to achieve this. This mode of communication has been successfully used in complex and sensitive projects for clients in Europe and USA including remote login.

Project Monitoring: Detailed project plan is drawn up internally, identifying individual tasks (say to the level of unit test plan, code review for a program unit etc.), defining deliverable for each of the tasks and assigning team member responsible for that task. These tasks are scheduled and monitored task wise as well as team member wise.

The project manager monitors projects on a weekly basis. Review meetings are conducted and attended by Project manager, head of offshore operations and offshore project leader. Thus any course corrections are done on a weekly basis limiting the impact on the project.

Project Reporting: Project managers provide regular project status reports to Customer and will also hold project review meetings with Customer on a regular basis during the course of the project. During these meetings, any issues to be resolved by the Customer will also be brought up. The frequency of these status reporting are typically fortnightly but can also be at a mutually agreed frequency.

Status reports provide activity/person wise targets and achievements to the extent of detail mutually agreed between Akshay and Customer.

Costing Models: In the offshore model Akshay can work either on time and material basis or on fixed cost basis. Even in case of time and material basis, Akshay and Customer can mutually define productivity norms. The performance of the team can be monitored against these norms. In case of maintenance situations, Akshay dedicates certain number of resources based on a retainer and associates the additionally required resources only when the tasks are assigned. These help Customer to minimize cost and retain the same level of productivity.

Intellectual Property Rights Protection: Akshay values Intellectual property Rights (IPR) of its clients and ensure that these rights are well protected.

First, it ensures that all development tools used are legal and hence any software produced for its clients are thus protected. Akshay can provide the list of tools used and copies of valid licenses for such tools used, on demand.

On completion of the contract, Akshay hands over all source code to the Customer. During development and during the period that Akshay has custody of the source code, source code access controls are instituted and the same is made visible to the Customer. Akshay is open to audit by Customer or its designated representative, of these source code access controls and procedures.

Akshay implements a confidentiality clause in all its employment contracts. It also gets individual team members to sign an IPR protection agreement for specific projects and can provide a copy to the Customer.

Akshay is agreeable to sign separate contracts on IPR protection and maintain confidentiality of proprietary information.




In short, the ODC will act as an extended arm of Customers’ development facility meeting peak needs or relieving scarce personnel to do other productive work. All this with no compromise to quality.

United Healthcare (Dental Re-insurance Division), Centura (Gupta) Software Corporation, Maxager Technology Inc., LetterClick and Electronic Healthcare Systems.

For further details, Please contact asi-itconsulting@akshay.com