Smaller Austin, Texas, High-Tech Firms Join Trend of Moving Work Overseas.

Byline: Amy Schatz

Aug. 11--When Austin-based Pragma Systems Inc. released new software for personal digital assistants last month, it marked a significant turn for the 13-year-old firm.

The software was the creation of Pragma developers in Austin and Dhaka, Bangladesh, where Pragma's new partner, Grameen Software Ltd., is based.

Outsourcing some of the coding offshore cut the software's development time in half, said Quamrul Mina, chief executive officer of Pragma, which creates server networking and security software for servers running Microsoft Corp.'s operating system.

"This economy and this industry are very dynamic. You have to take advantage of all the possibilities," Mina said. He said the partnership has freed his Austin software engineers to focus on other …