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Friday, January 16, 2009

IT Offshore Outsourcing to recover in 2009

Posted by james on November 20, 2008

IT offshore outsourcing is projected to increase by 5.2% in 2009. This is a remarkable recovery of IT offshore outsourcing from the previous economic recession wherein the industry only got 4.2% in 2006 since the two years of decline. That is the good news. The bad news is that IT offshore outsourcing does not gain sufficient popularity among Chief Information Officers (CIO’s) of the world’s major companies. This happens due to the  contradiction with media stories about great waves in IT offshore outsourcing when famous US company Dell Computers shift its customer support services to India. Such shifting of customer support services is also followed by Citibank.

IT Outsourcing Data

The good news was being confirmed on the latest 2008 survey of Society of Information Management (SIM). A considerable leap of 5.2% IT budget allocation for offshore outsourcing by world’s IT leaders in 2009 will likely to cover up the IT offshore outsourcing losses in 2007 and 2008, amounting only to 4% and 3.2%, respectively. The previous years’ data even negatively forecasting that IT offshore outsourcing might eventually die.

Although most CIOs in today’s major companies lack so much confidence in offshore outsourcing, they are made to embrace it due to two factors. First is the crisis on the current global economy. The hiatus among US banking systems in 2008 greatly influenced major corporations to outsource IT-related tasks for cost-saving purposes. Second is the crisis on the scarcity of relevant skills-package among IT professional pool in the US. The possibility of hiring domestic IT workers is deemed impractical. These factors prompted the CIOs to consider IT offshore outsourcing as the only solution to the problem. Well, the year 2009 could be a make or break for the IT offshore outsourcing. The outsourcing service providers have to prove themselves worthy of the trust handed down by the world’s IT leaders.