Introduction: The Emerging IT Outsourcing Landscape

The global information technology outsourcing (ITO) market has increased each year since 1989, when global ITO was only a $9 to $12 billion market. In 2007, the global ITO market was estimated to be between a $200 to $250 billion market. The business process outsourcing (BPO) market in 2008 was less than the ITO market, but growing at a faster rate. On conservative estimates, looking across a range of reports and studies, global IT outsourcing revenues probably exceeded $US 270 billion in 2010. With business process outsourcing revenues exceeding $US 165 billion in the same year, and offshore outsourcing representing more than $US 65 billion of these combined revenue figures (Willcocks, Cullen and Craig, 2011), it is very clear that, with its 20-year plus history, outsourcing of IT and business services is moving into becoming an almost routine part of management, representing in many major corporations and government agencies the greater percentage of their IT expenditure. Moreover, all projections we have looked at or made suggest continued growth over the next five years (2011–15). Our own synthesis of the reports from Gartner, Everest, NASSCOM and IDC suggests that ITO global growth will be in the range of 5–8 per cent per annum, with business process outsourcing rising by 8–12 per cent per annum, and, subsumed within these, offshore outsourcing growing at an even faster annual rate.