Offshoring:
An Ever Growing Tendency in IT
The offshoring of IT workplaces is an increasing trend that not even legislation should try and stop, at least that is the conclusion one can draw from a recent research report realised by the consultancy company Frost & Sullivan.
An attempt by any western national government to induce a shrinkage of the exporting of work to poorer countries, where costs are very low, by means of legislation would bring about catastrophic results, placing the nation "at a competitive disadvantage to companies based in nations without such laws", states the report.
"Thus, any legislative action to protect IT jobs in developed regions of the world would have to be initiated as part of a global alliance of developed governments to be effective and it is felt that the probability of that occurring is non-existent," it goes on.
Over the following couple of years the amount of IT jobs outsourced by France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK and the US is presumably going to increase by around 826,000 with a value of $51.6bn, according to the report.
The US and Japan apparently are going to be the biggest job exporters in 2004, the study estimates. These will account for 70% of the 7.6 million IT jobs outsourced. The total value of those workplaces is estimated at $464bn.
In Europe, Germany holds the pole position with 985,000 IT jobs expected to be sent offshore, followed by the UK and France with some 470,000 each.
The kinds of IT jobs probably most commonly outsourced include customer support, tech support, software and hardware development and testing, network administration and help desk, says the report.
Given the fact that the outsourcing trend is not going anywhere anytime soon, Frost & Sullivan suggest the more developed countries that keep sending jobs overseas to try and compete by creating a better educated, a more innovative and specialised IT workforce.
