Outsourcer Mindfire Unveils IBM i Programming Practice
November 9, 2010 Alex Woodie
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How does hiring an RPG programmer at $25 per hour sound to you? With the new IBM i development and application support practice announced last week by the Indian IT services company Mindfire Solutions, that’s about what a senior developer will cost you. In addition to RPG, COBOL, Java, CL, and Synon programming expertise, Mindfire says its consultants have experience supporting JD Edwards and implementing MIMIX. Mindfire Solutions was founded in the Indian capital of New Delhi about 10 years ago, just as dot-com bubble was crashing, and business process outsourcing (BPO) was heating up. The company began providing development, testing, and maintenance services to companies in Western countries, with a focus on Web development, Microsoft Windows, and Apple Macintosh computers. In addition to helping with other organizations’ projects, the company developed its own software for the education market, and patented a product it used for cross-referencing and documenting code. Over the years, Mindfire grew its business, and today it employs 460 people in facilities in New Delhi and Bhubaneswar, and boasts more than 200 clients in the United States and Europe. If its website is any guide, the company focuses primarily on mainstream development tools, such as Java, PHP, ASP.NET, JavaScript, ColdFusion, Perl, Ruby on Rails, Silverlight, and SharePoint, to name a few. Mindfire also has an active database development practice, with expertise in SQL Server, Progress, and Filemaker. With the mobile phone market exploding, chances are good that demand for Mindfire’s iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Android, J2ME, and BREW development expertise is in high demand. Despite the fact that Mindfire’s expertise in the IBM midrange server is listed under the “other skills” section of its website, Mindfire project manager Joy Pattnaik say the company has an abundance of experience on the platform formerly known as AS/400. “We have a team of highly skilled professionals who have expertise in RPG, COBOL, Java, and WebSphere development and support,” Pattnaik states in a press release. “We also have a team of system engineers skilled in migration and hardware maintenance, backup and recovery, [and] replication using BRMS and MIMIX.” The company claims it has worked on RPG ILE projects in healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, sales and distribution, and the hospitality industries. In addition to RPG skills, the company has experience with CGI data access techniques, CA‘s 2E development environment (formerly developed by Synon and known by several different names), and can provide “administration and support for third-party application packages in AS/400 such as JD Edwards and other retail packages,” the company says. While pay rates vary depending on the project, a senior Mindfire developer would work for about $25 per hour, according to its website. Compared to the average RPG developer in the United States who, in 2006, was paid about $74,000 per year, that’s about two-thirds of the cost–before things like payroll taxes, 401(k) matches, and healthcare contributions are added to the mix. When those items are added, the offshore option is much less expensive. For more information on Mindfire’s IBM i development and support services, see the company’s website at www.mindfiresolutions.com.
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