Elance is shutting down after 17 years of operating
2015 became a turning point for IT outsourcing industry. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that next year we all are going to take a step into a new era. Post‑Elance era.
Most people who have ever dealt or considered software development outsourcing, heard about Elance — online employment platform, launched in 1999, that over the years became a workplace of choice for over two million freelancers and hundreds of thousands businesses. In 2015 Elance announced its merging with another employment platform — oDesk, to form a brand new freelance resource named Upwork.
We started working on Elance back in a day, in 2001, when we were a small company consisting of just 8 developers, that survived despite the ordeal of .com bubble burst. In the following years we worked our way to the very top of Elance ratings and stayed there ever since. Now, 15 years later, we've grown up to over 150 developers, yet we're as excited to see what future will bring to us as back in 2001.
Saying goodbye to a platform that has been bringing us our most interesting and challenging projects is bittersweet, but it also broadens our horizons. Currently we're not only looking forward to fully start working on Upwork, but we are also actively collaborating with other platforms like Guru, Freelancer, AppFutura, Twago and Ariba. We're also planning to continue gaining experience in offline communication with our clients. Currently one of our IT consultants is working in Virginia and upcoming spring we're planning to expand our presence in the United States.
We're excited to see how outsourcing industry will change in the next year, but we're excited the most to continue doing what we do best — helping our client to bring their fresh and innovative ideas to life.