Customer Reviews

Buying Web Services: The Survival Guide to Outsourcing

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Whether you are a web developer or a company considering outsourcing, this book is a small investment you need to make. Many of the chapters focus on areas that will not change much over many years. Project disipline, forming a consensus, ensuring you have high-level support will always be needed. I am a web developer, and I would (with the singular exception of one chapter, which I felt the contributer was way, way too jaded...)highly recommend to my clients. I find knowledgable clients much easier to work with then newbies. They are far more realistic about the time, effort, and potential for reward. And the costs. The book is not the end-and-be-all, but it doesn't try to be; bottom line, it is a sober, necessary resource to turn to.

We have recommended this book to Fortune 500 companies, internal staff who are responsible for some areas of web work, and businesses of all sizes.

The education gathered from this book allows a business to learn enough to ask questions and make informed decisions.

As a web development company, we want our customers to know what they are buying and to be able to tell the difference between our company and our competitors.

I highly recommend this book and hope you enjoy it.

J. P. Frenza has written Buying Web Services to provide plenty of necessary information for any company or organization to get the best Website design job possible for their money while at the same time minimizing the risks involved in bringing in outside people to perform the work for them.

This book offers concise guidelines for planning such as evaluating proposals and budgets, develop contracts, coordinating development efforts, Website ownership and copyright issues, prioritizing, working with individual and multiple contractors, selecting Web development technologies (such as Web browser and platform compatibility), and programming issues. It is important to realize that a lot of work goes into putting together a successful Website and keeping it up-to-date. These and other factors are very important considerations anyone planning to setup an online presence must take into account.

The author provides a number of helpful resources for additional reference purposes. A helpful chapter that lists Websites, books, magazines, e-zines, trade shows, and user groups offers plenty of additional assistance. Input from professionals in the field adds dynamic impact to the effectiveness this book can have to enhance a company's online presence as well.

There are a number of people and companies around today to outsource work to. This book will help readers to develop a serious plan of action that includes finding the right people and resources and putting them to productive use. This book will help readers to count the cost before undertaking any Website design job. Highly recommended!

I can understand why some of the developers don't want to their clients to read this book--it points to some level of standards that developers should maintain when building Web sites. I have used the book extensively in my search for a Web developer and can say that it has helped me separate the good developers who have my business interests at heart from the bad developers. In the chapter on Web hosting I was immediately able to learn that two of the proposals that I received did not include any of the costs for hosting and maintaining my Web site. When I pushed the developers for that information much to my surprise I found their estimate actually tripled. I can see why developers don't want that sort of information out there for us clients. I agree the book could be a little less common sense and a little more hardcore outsourcing information but there's not much out there on the subject and this book is a step in the right direction.

In response to the previous reviewer, I think some people, including myself, have concluded that this is a mediocre book. It's as simple as that. Most of the negative reviews here have been succinct and on target. This isn't a book I would ask my clients to spend their valuable time reading.

People aren't giving reasons why they don't like this book. This calls into question the whole idea of this forum. Someome says this book gives bad advice but doesn't say what advice it is. I've read the book and am using it to guide my way with my clients. The book isn't just written by one person. It is a compilation of thoughts from some really good developers. They all can't be wrong. Maybe the people who wrote the negative comments are jealous. Or they are just all from New York?

I have read all of the comments that people have made. Even the ones from those pesky New Yorkers. I think they are way off base. This book is very basic because it was written for people who don't necessarily understand the Web but have to hire someone to build a Web site. This is important. Lots of people are trying to build businesses on the Web that don't know everything. They don't care about Wired Magazine. They are trying to figure out this medium and this book helps alot. I gave it to five of my clients. They said it was the best thing they ever read on the Web.

I was pretty excited about the concept and title of the book, but the more I read, the more my disappointment grew. A beginner would benefit more from a half-hour conversation over a cup of coffee with a somewhat experience web developer. And if you have any web developement experience at all there are more useful books out there.

I highly recommend this book.

By its title, it sounds like this book is useful only for companies looking to outsource their site, and if you are not outsourcing your site, you might think you should skip this book and buy Yet Another Book on HTML, Perl, or Java. In fact, the book is useful for anyone who is responsible for getting a website built, whether the site is being contracted "out" or "in" and whether the reader is a buyer of services or a provider of them.

It's useful to all these audiences because the book is much more than a pricing guide (speaking of which, I noticed that the author has written one of these, too). The authors understand that to educate people on how to buy web services, they need to explain the process of _building_ web services so the user knows how to properly evaluate them. In spite of the fact that "process" shows up only once in the index, discussions of _process_ is one of the most interesting parts of the book.

As anyone who has built a website (or a book, or a house, or a company) can tell you, the challenge is only partly technical. The other challenge is procedural: knowing what to do when, knowing who should do what. What I liked about this book is that in the process of teaching you how to buy web services, it teaches you a great deal about building them. The book surveys the different structures and processes of various web companies, and gives you their diverse insights into the development process.

Before you outsource your organization's web site, or any part of it, you need to read this book. Compares "in" or "out"sourcing, helps you determine your goals and concepts to prepare a Request for Proposal (RFP), helps you evaluate proposals and budgets, helps you understand design, hosting, legal issues.... Shows you how to manage long-term projects and multiple contractors, and how to set things right when they go wrong. Talks about search engines and site promotion, e-commerce, and more; provides resources--not just links, but also magazines, conferences, etc. Every business person should read this book before considering building a web site. I also recommend it to my clients and use it as a standard for doing business with my clients.