Castle Stronghold and Mindscape, a New Zealand based company, have signed a very promising partnership. It intends to create business opportunities for both parties. So, all companies from New Zealand that comes to us for software development will be gently redirected to Mindscape. Thus, if you’re in NZ, and want to build something using the Castle Project and want to outsource some of the work or get some professional help, you will be in very good hands with Mindscape.
Hope this is just a small step in a friendly and professional relationship.
May 20th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Playing devils advocate
Being in NZ I’m wary of one thing… cost.
Will Mindscape match the Competitive USD rates of Castle Stronghold in Brazil (which I think would probably see their hourly rate sitting below $70/NZ hr)?
May 20th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Definitely not. But they have their margin. But I’d invert the question: will Stronghold be able to have a presence in NZ without a partnership with a well-known company?
May 20th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Indeed it is hard, especially considering the rather marginal “window” of business hours where NZ & Brazil overlap - that said how is the presence of Castle Stronghold going in other countries (like say the UK or the US?) … is this the beginning of a partnership trend (I’m assuming Israel is already covered! ;o)
RE: NZ Presence - I guess I’d be more interested in whether the Castle Project itself will have a presence in New Zealand at all - I think we’re all still waiting to see where the Chips fall with regards to adoption, I know some of us are starting to spark interest in the general community… but there’s an air of reluctance, probably because there isn’t enough of us “banging the drum” at user group meetings / technical conferences… and there’s certainly quite a bit of confusion around what the Castle Project is/does (for instance, a lot of people think it’s purely a web development framework).
Now to dig a little more… how gentle is the push, if a project wanted work done by Castle Stronghold Brazil because of the more appealing rates or because the skill sets may be stronger “at-source” (even after factoring in the additional costs/difficulties of communication etc.) … will they be accommodated, or do they get immediately redirected to a country based partner like Mindscape?
Just curious
May 21st, 2007 at 7:53 am
Alex, they will be redirected. You can mention all these issues, and they may forward that back to us. Your case might be an exception as we have spoken before this partnership.
May 21st, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Hi Alex,
You can also contact us with any concerns you have and we’re happy to discuss. It has been great to see that Castle is just starting to properly get noticed in NZ and we take our partnership seriously and will be looking to help raise this profile further.
John-Daniel Trask