By Paul Gasparro

When someone asks Bert Hill of the Ottawa Citizen, “why Canada?”, his answer is simple, “a highly-educated workforce, R&D tax credits that cut up to 70 per cent (of the cost of ) developing technology, and backed by the world’s soundest banking system.”

Canada always comes out on top of any survey for outsourcing when evaluated for language, infrastructure, culture, education, security, etc. just take a look at the recent Gartner report. The only place it does not excel is in labor costs.

The economy is almost in a freefall and governments are in a rush to put money into the economy to create jobs. Canada is ahead of the game with Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED), Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), Quebec’s eBusiness, etc. IP incentive programs. These benefits are being passed onto US customers in the form of reduced costs, with the result being that Canada now leads in total cost of ownership

In a research report published by Black Book Research and Brown-Wilson Group, ranking the safest countries in the world to do outsourcing—India ranked in the bottom ten, Canada, the top ten.

Talking to a prospect the other day, he said he really was not interested in the price, he was interested in expertise. I AGREED. I told him MapleWorks engineers have an average of 15 years experience with all of our DNA in network communications—HE AGREED.

The economy has placed ever more pressure on companies to save money while avoiding risks. Offshoring is adventurous and risky. Onshoring (MapleWorks) offers services that provide an innovative, high quality solution on time, without the geopolitical risks of offshoring and at significantly lower cost than US development.

It is hard to believe anyone that says they have not been impacted by the downturn.

(Paul Gasparro is Co-founder and Vice President of Business Development for MapleWorks – the smart choice for on-shore software development.)