The UK is one of the most vibrant and most dynamic technology markets in Europe. It is anticipated that the software industry alone will bring in $38.21 billion by 2025. The market is growing at a rate of 4.83% annually until 2030, so this expansion is not a one-time occurrence, according to Statista.
The Belitsoft custom software development firm explains why this offers UK tech companies both tremendous opportunities and significant challenges. In this quickly growing market, bespoke software that is exactly tailored to a company’s particular needs has become a key tactic for beating the competition.
Simultaneously, software development tools have improved. The .NET ecosystem (including versions 8 and 9) has become much more powerful, allowing for higher-performance, more versatile, and cloud-ready applications. But these new, sophisticated technologies need developers with highly specialised knowledge in areas like containerised apps, cloud-native development, and microservices.
This has made the existing shortage of specialised .NET developers in the UK even worse. Locally, businesses are having trouble finding the right talent.
The Main Reasons UK Companies are Betting on Nearshoring
Lower Daily Operating Costs
It is not only about paying lower salaries. Businesses also experience a notable drop in their overall operating expenses. This comprises:
- lowering the amount of money spent on recruiting and onboarding new staff
- having to spend less on equipment and actual office space
- putting money aside for benefits like health insurance and pensions that are necessary for permanent workers.
Hiring a developer in Poland, for instance, can be about 40% less expensive than hiring a contractor of the same calibre in the UK, all the while guaranteeing that the work is completed to the highest technical and professional standards.
Lack of Specialised Skills Makes It Hard to Find the Right Talent
The acute shortage of developers with specialised .NET skills is one of the main problems facing the UK tech industry. For senior developers who are knowledgeable about modern software development methodologies, this is especially true:
- Building an application as a collection of discrete, independent services is known as microservices.
- Cloud-native development is the process of developing software that is especially made to operate in the cloud.
- The process of packaging software to run reliably across a range of computing environments is known as containerisation.
Flexible Team Sizes
It can be expensive to retain a large team of in-house, full-time developers, especially during uncertain economic times. Even if there isn’t enough work, you still have to pay them.
Nearshoring provides a more adaptable strategy. It allows UK companies to easily make their development team larger or smaller based on what a project needs at the time.
When a project is busy, they can quickly add more developers. When it’s finished, they can scale back down. They can accomplish this without incurring costs or committing to long-term staffing. This adaptability is helpful when a company’s priorities abruptly change as a result of market shifts.
Getting Products to Market Quicker
Due to their similar time zones, UK businesses and their Eastern European counterparts have a lot of overlap in their workdays. This makes it possible to share knowledge in real time and communicate back and forth quickly.
Teams can solve problems together in real time, provide instant feedback, and hold daily check-in meetings. This would be much harder if the team was halfway across the world in a completely different time zone. Because of this efficient collaboration, companies using nearshore partnerships report getting their crucial software to market up to 28% faster.
The Modern .NET Development Landscape
Specialised .NET Skills
Performance Optimisation
Expert .NET engineers use advanced techniques to make sure applications run quickly and smoothly, even when thousands of people are using them at the same time. They optimise the application’s memory usage, implement asynchronous programming to prevent the app from becoming sluggish, optimise database queries for speed, and create clever caching strategies to store frequently used data.
Integration Capabilities
In a business context, .NET applications nearly always require system connectivity. Senior developers are adept at creating these connections through a variety of techniques: asynchronous message-based communication, high-performance gRPC endpoints, and popular RESTful APIs. In order to maintain dependability, they also employ safety features like fallback mechanisms, retry policies, and circuit breakers, which stop a malfunctioning system from starting a chain reaction of errors.
Proficiency in Data Management
A key skill for .NET developers is knowing how to handle data properly. To do this, developers need experience with different kinds of databases, like SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Cosmos DB, and Redis.
However, this ability extends well beyond data retrieval and storage. It also involves making the database run as fast as possible, and correctly handling operations that involve multiple steps to ensure data stays accurate. Your .NET developers must intelligently choose the best database type for each specific job within the application, much like picking the right tool for a task.
Ways to Work with a Nearshore .NET Partner
The Team Augmentation Model
The most common way for UK companies to work with a nearshore partner is called the “Team Augmentation” model. Using this strategy, a business recruits individual outside developers to bolster its current staff.
It allows British tech leaders to access specialised skills they lack internally. At the same time, they can maintain direct control over the project. They can oversee day-to-day operations and technical decisions.
In successful team augmentation, external developers are typically seasoned, senior-level experts. They become full members of your current team, take part in your regular meetings and processes, and fit in with the culture of your business. Combine these senior experts (who offer technical leadership) with mid-level developers (who provide a good balance of skill and cost) for the actual coding work, and you are likely to get the best results.
The Dedicated Team Model
For projects that last a long time, or for companies that don’t have enough managers to oversee individual outside developers, the “Dedicated Team” model is a great alternative.
Instead of hiring a few separate developers, a single partner provides a UK company with a pre-assembled team. Typically, this group consists of software developers, business analysts, project managers, and quality assurance testers. They act as a remote part of your company, but the nearshore partner handles all the administrative tasks like payroll and HR.
The stability of the dedicated team model is one of its main benefits. The team members feel like they belong to a community and have opportunities for professional advancement because they work for the partner company. This reduces the likelihood that they will leave the project, which is a common problem with temporary workers.
Project-Based Outsourcing
Hiring a contractor to build a house is comparable to this model. You give them the blueprints, and they build it, then hand you the keys. It works best on projects where you have a clear vision from the start, along with deadlines and specific goals. Your nearshore partner is solely in charge of delivering the final product in compliance with the approved specifications, timeline, and budget.
This model is simple and predictable. In contrast to team augmentation or dedicated team models, the trade-off is that it is much more difficult to alter the project requirements once it has begun. Additionally, it usually means that your internal staff receives less training and expertise.
The Future of Nearshore .NET Development
New Trends and Skills
The field of nearshore .NET development is changing quickly. The way UK businesses and their partners collaborate is being influenced by a number of recent trends.
Adding Artificial Intelligence (AI)
.NET teams in Eastern Europe are getting very good at building AI and machine learning into applications. They use tools like Azure Cognitive Services, ML.NET, and OpenAI. As a result, UK businesses no longer need to become AI experts to incorporate sophisticated features into their software, such as comprehending human language, recognising objects in photos, or making predictions.
Creating Ready-to-Use Development Platforms
The “Starter Kit” is a pre-made, standardised setup that the nearshore company provides to all of its developers. Pre-approved security settings, templates for the underlying computer infrastructure (servers, databases, etc.), and necessary programming tools are all included in this kit.
Developers don’t need days or weeks to set up their workspace. They can start writing code for the actual project on the first day. Every team member uses the same setup. As a result, the final software is more dependable and secure because there are fewer mistakes and security rules are automatically included. The developers can concentrate all of their energy and intelligence on creating the unique features that clients need, rather than getting bogged down in complex technical setup work.
An Increased Attention to Security
Nearshore developers are now incorporating security into their process from the start due to the increasing sophistication of cyber threats. Instead of being a last-minute check, security is now a crucial component of the software’s design and development process because of the “Privacy-by-Architecture” approach. For UK companies that deal with sensitive customer data, like those in the banking or medical sectors, this is especially important.
Strategic Considerations for UK Organisations
The UK’s software industry is growing very quickly and is expected to be worth $63.57 billion by 2030. Because of this growth, there is a huge need for highly-skilled software developers, but there aren’t enough of them available locally in the UK.
Facing this talent shortage, along with budget constraints and the constant need to keep up with new technology, many UK tech companies are turning to partners in Eastern Europe for help with .NET development.
These neighbouring nations have a number of advantages, including highly qualified developers, cheaper prices, and a business culture that is comparable to that of the UK. This allows British companies to build software faster without sacrificing quality.
Because these European hubs in countries like Poland and Romania are only 1-2 hours ahead, teams can easily collaborate during the same workday. Compared to partners in different time zones, this facilitates collaboration considerably.
Because of this, UK businesses that employ this “nearshoring” approach are discovering that they can create better products, launch them more quickly, and adjust to changes more readily.
About the Author:
Dmitry Baraishuk is a partner and Chief Innovation Officer at a software development company Belitsoft (a Noventiq company). He has been leading a department specializing in custom software development for 20 years. The department has hundreds of successful projects in AI software development, healthcare and finance IT consulting, application modernization, cloud migration, data analytics implementation, and more for startups and enterprises in the US, UK, and Canada.
