Potential Benefits of Lower Costs, Faster Project Delivery Offer Case for Offshore Outsourcing
As information technology responds to leadership demands to "do more with less," the appeal of utilizing offshore services is alluring. Businesses are increasingly looking to foreign resources to augment and, in some cases, even supplant domestic IT efforts. The potential benefits of lower costs, higher quality, and "follow the sun" development to gain faster delivery of projects offers a compelling case for offshore services.
In general, offshore outsourcing refers to the outsourcing of information technology functions to services providers in foreign countries. These services may include not only application development, but application maintenance, help desk support, data center operations, IT infrastructure, security services, Web site hosting and network and communication services. In addition to IT services, outsourcing basic business functions such as call centers, mail centers and order processing have also become more prevalent in offshore services.
Offshore outsourcing is more than just a fad or a method of obtaining a onetime cost advantage. The use of offshore companies to support IT work is a trend that is expected to continue. According to industry research by Gartner, less than 5 percent of IT jobs in the United States and other developed countries are currently sent offshore. It is expected that during the next 10 years, the number will rise to 30 percent.
