India's traditional outsourcing centers appear to be falling out of favor.
According to Pierre Audoin Consultants, outsourcing companies are increasingly looking outside Bangalore and Mumbai when choosing bases in which to set up shop.
PAC found that while India remains popular with the top 50 outsourcing companies--11 of the 49 new offshoring delivery centers set up in 2008 were based in the country--vendors are progressively creating more bases in cities such as Chennai, Noida, Hyderabad, and Pune.
According to Nick Mayes, a senior consultant at PAC, conditions for outsourcers in Bangalore and Mumbai are no longer as favorable as they once were.
"Over the last two or three years, labor markets, particularly in Bangalore and Mumbai, have become overheated. The big IT services companies and multinational companies have been competing very intensely for the best resources coming out of the universities and also resources from their rival organizations," he told Silicon.com.
Big Indian outsourcers TCS and Wipro have been first to turn to the second tier, establishing links with the universities and inspiring a shift toward cities like Chennai and Pune.
The consultants also found a trend among outsourcers to spread outsourcing sites over a number of countries.
"(Outsourcers) are spreading not just the risk but also being wary of being overdependent on single-market terms of salary inflation in that country or the political environment in that country," Mayes noted.
Over 2008, PAC found that 10 new outsourcing centers were opened in Latin America and another six in China, while Mayes believes Malaysia and the Philippines will also increasingly prove to be attractive outsourcing destinations.
While similarities in business culture and language will keep India at the top of the United Kingdom's list of outsourcing hot spots, Eastern Europe and Russia could be set to emerge as an alternative.
"There's some fantastic technical skills coming out of the former Soviet Union--guys with 20 or 30 years' experience of programming for military organizations and things like that," Mayes said.
"Slowly but surely," he said, "companies are starting to get the supplier marketplace in place to be able to support Western clients--previously, it was 10 or 20 man outfits out there, but we're starting to see some sizeable companies build up, and that's what Western clients want to work with. They want the security of knowing the company they're working with will be around in 12 months time so they can commit to serious business with them."
Jo Best of Silicon.com reported from London.
New contenders are emerging to challenge the BRIC countries' dominance of the offshoring market.
While India was the "undisputed leader," followed by China and other BRIC countries Russia and Brazil, research firm Gartner's list this year of the top 30 offshoring destinations showed Mexico, Poland, and Vietnam pushing their way up to take them on.
Ian Marriott, research vice president at Gartner, said these countries would be seeking to take advantage of the credit crisis to capitalize on organizations' drive to save costs.
The four countries that dropped out from last year's Top 30 were Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Uruguay, while the new entrants were Egypt, Morocco, Panama, and Thailand.
Marriott said the four that dropped out of the list had not underperformed but that the dynamic nature of the market had seen others making strong progress.
Gartner judged the locations on language, government support, labor pool, infrastructure, educational system, cost, political and economic environment, cultural compatibility, global and legal maturity, and privacy and security of data and intellectual property.
Strong interest in near-shore locations was a key factor for companies choosing an offshore location, as were language skills, cultural compatibility, time zone, and travel time.
The final list included 13 countries from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa--such as the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary, which were valued for their language skills--and for the first time, two North African countries.
The trend for countries in Europe being used as near-shore centers for traditional service providers and large Indian providers also continued.
The study found that South America is becoming an attractive proposition for the United States, the largest buying market for offshore services, and that they are increasingly valued for their Spanish-speaking skills.
Ten countries from the Asia-Pacific region were represented in the list, while there were also emerging countries such as Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam--mostly chosen for their attractive costs. Below are Gartner's top 30.
Americas:
- Argentina
- Brazil
- Canada
- Chile
- Costa Rica
- Mexico
- Panama
Asia-Pacific region:
- Australia
- China
- India
- Malaysia
- New Zealand
- Pakistan
- The Philippines
- Singapore
- Thailand
- Vietnam
EMEA:
- Czech Republic
- Egypt
- Hungary
- Ireland
- Israel
- Morocco
- Poland
- Romania
- Russia
- Slovakia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Ukraine
Nick Heath of Silicon.com reported from London.
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