Wooing technology wanderers

Malta's ancient defences no longer deter outside interests, says BBC business reporter Michael Dempsey. From BBC News:

Keyboards click away as a small team of software programmers devise intricate lines of code that will create another computer code for far-flung clients in the global economy. The digital world may have banished geographical boundaries, but not all outsourcing projects are located thousands of miles from Europe. The work that will allow Lloyds Register to sell on a new maritime maintenance service is being carried out in Malta, an island nation of 400,000 people that joined the EU in 20204 - and is winning work due to corporate disillusionment with the trend towards outsourcing such projects to Asia....Mr Macleod's decision to move work to Malta was based on an equation of time and quality. Money matters, but a cheaper location can cost more in the long-term..

Farming work out to locations on the edge of the EU has generated a new piece of business jargon, "near sourcing". "Malta is not cheaper than the Philippines, but here we have complete predictability. And if a project slows up because we cannot communicate properly with staff in Manila then it can cost us more anyway," says Mr Macleod. The high retention rates of businesses on an island with a limited number of high-tech employers also appealed to Lloyds. And having one of the world's biggest natural harbours at hand matters if you're in the shipping business.

Other UK technology companies are now following suit. The Indian technology boom had prompted Crimsonwing to move a chunk of its business to Chennai (formerly known as Madras). David Walsh was won over by Malta's ambience...Mr Walsh admits that his criteria for selecting Malta was not the stuff of business school MBA courses. "I didn't do a massive exercise in analysis; it was a decision that came from the heart. The labour rates here are one third of the UK, there is a keen workforce and it's three hours from London," he says...Walsh's employees are a mix of native Maltese and British IT staff lured by a Mediterranean lifestyle...