The most comprehensive annual survey of global outsourcing has picked out the leaders in the burgeoning market for infrastructure services.
The Brown-Wilson Group’s Black Book of Outsourcing for 2007 – which ranks the top ten suppliers based on 18 criteria of “operational excellence and client satisfaction with outcomes” – puts India’s HCL Technologies in the number one spot, in a nascent market that HCL itself reckons is worth a potential $55 billion worldwide.
EDS, CSC, Unisys and IBM also feature in the top five of the ranking, which assessed the strengths and weaknesses of 276 vendors across their customers’ overall preferences and recommendations, breadth of offerings and client types, delivery record and other benchmarks.
Infrastructure outsourcing services – through which an organisation’s servers, storage devices, desktops and other systems are managed on site or remotely – has been named as the “third wave of outsourcing” by India’s National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), rivalling in size the first two waves of outsourced software services and business process outsourcing.
• Saving money is no longer the number one reason for IT outsourcing, according to research undertaken by professional recruitment consultancy Harvey Nash.
In its annual survey of more than 650 senior technology professionals in the UK, it found that the majority (75%) cited responsiveness and flexibility as the primary drivers behind their decision to outsource.
The survey revealed that confidence in IT outsourcing is strong, as businesses increasingly recognise the potential strategic benefits as well as operational cost savings. One in two (53%) expect their IT budget to grow next year, and a similar number plan to spend more than 10% of it on IT outsourcing programmes.
Confidence and satisfaction in offshore software development service providers remains high. The vast majority (93%) of those surveyed plan to maintain or increase their current offshore software development activities in the next 12 months, and two-thirds (65%) say they are satisfied with the service they receive.
The geographical spread of IT outsourcing contracts shows some subtle changes. India and China are still the most popular destinations, but countries such as Poland, Romania, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brazil are also emerging as offshoring hotspots.
