Offshore IT Outsourcing: Everyone's Game

Contrary to what everyone thinks, not all IT jobs are losing to the offshore outsourcing trend. It has been a well known fact that India has been a power player in the whole offshoring business. With so many companies setting up call centers in India it seems that the jobs just keep on coming. However, that’s not entirely the case as more and more countries steps up to offshore outsourcing hype and takes advantage of its prominence. Apple withdrew its plans on India because it figured that there are more services that offer good quality with still lower costs.

That is one of the prime examples where the main logic of offshore outsourcing to cut costs doesn’t apply anymore. Suddenly, with the emergence of countries stepping up to the plate offering high quality service at an even lower cost the battle for offshore attention gets tougher. This makes me think though, just how low are these companies aiming for? The cost keeps going down and the quality seemingly keeps going up.

Offshore IT outsourcing has been a delicate subject for many Americans as they have been losing their jobs for cheaper labor overseas. Buildings used primarily for business in the US have slowly been converted to residential spaces because of more and more Americans losing their jobs to the offshore outsourcing trend. While this is happening, more and more residential spaces in countries like India and China are being converted to commercial spaces.

The situation seems to grow dim but aren’t we overreacting a little? People lose jobs and gain jobs on a regular basis. The only reason that offshore outsourcing is getting the spotlight is that the change and the number happened to be too big, too fast. But the rate of the sudden crash in employment doesn’t equate to underemployment. At least not yet. If the government wants to calm its citizens down, then they should determine which jobs are getting offshored, which jobs are staying and how to protect them. Probably more important than all this, is the creation of new job opportunities and greater compensation benefits. India is currently the number one offshore IT outsourcing player in the game but even India loses their IT jobs from client companies to greater competition. So nothing is absolute. It's everyone's game.