India leads but China catching up in offshore services biz

New Delhi, Dec 11 (UNI) India remains the leader in offshore services, but countries like China, Russia and Brazil are proving to be a major competition, a study by IT research and advisory firm Gartner Inc today said.

Gartner, in a study covering 30 countries, assessed countries for their suitability for offshore locations.

It predicts the offshore spending to grow 60 per cent in Europe, and 40 per cent in the US.

''The aim of the study was not to rank each country, as every organisation will have a different view of which factors are the most important for their needs, but rather help sourcing managers determine which locations are right for their organisations,'' Gartner Vice President (Research) Ian Marriott said.

Ten parameters were used to determine the potential locations for offshore or nearshore IT or business process services. They were-language, government support, labour pool, infrastructure, educational system, cost, political and economic environment, cultural compatibility, global and legal maturity, and data and intellectual property security and privacy, he added.

According to the study, the top 30 locations include India, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Uruguay, Australia, China, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Northern Ireland, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey and Ukraine.

In the Asia-Pacific region, China fared poorly for language skills, even as it is positioned as India's greatest challenger in terms of its potential scale.

China, India and Singapore demonstrated strong government support for the promotion of their country as an offshore services location, the study said.

The political and economic environment remains a concern for many companies when moving work to offshore locations as Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam all performed weakly.

UNI