Irish IT outsourcing company IT Alliance has unveiled plans to create 20 new jobs in its Irish testing division, a move that will bring the headcount in that division to 60 people. The company has also revealed that it has set up a facility in Romania to target the eastern European and Indian markets.
IT Alliance was established in 1979 and provides a range of services to blue chip companies. The company is headquartered in Dublin and currently employs 250 people and is counted as one of the largest indigenous IT outsourcing companies in the country.
As part of the expansion of its testing group, IT Alliance has headhunted UK testing expert Tony Hall as principal test consultant. The global outsourcing testing market is estimated to be worth US$13bn, of which about a third is outsourced.
The market involves testing of software, hardware and infrastructure. Tony Hall, who has advised major UK corporations including Alliance & Leicester, BT and DHL, says that growth in the market is being driven by risk mitigation. “Corporate governance, compliance and the need to deliver products to the market quickly are the driving forces behind the increased demand for testing services.
“For example, if a financial institution provides a new product or upgrades existing infrastructure they can fall in serious breach of the regulator if there is a glitch in the software which causes consumer issues,” Hall said.
IT Alliance has existing testing customers in the telco, financial services, software manufacturing and insurance sectors. The company is now actively recruiting for personnel with commercial experience in these sectors coupled with technical skills in Oracle, J2EE and Java.
Commenting on the move to offshore testing in lower-cost economies such as eastern Europe and India, Tony Hall said that IT Alliance has set up a facility in Romania to manage more routine testing tasks.
The company has also recently established a separate Project Management Centre in Dublin under Terence O’Donnell, former director of the Centre for Project Management at the University of Limerick (UL).
Hall said: “We can thus offer a full service testing facility with staff on the ground in Ireland and UK, combined with professional project management, and a low cost centre option in eastern Europe where that is appropriate for customers.”
Hall added that often testing is mission critical or time sensitive and so not all projects are suitable for offshore delivery.
By John Kennedy
Pictured is Tony Hall, principal test consultant at IT Alliance
