Nearshore Blog

IT Offshoring Trend to Continue through 2020; But Positions Suitable for Offshoring Shrinking

The number of IT employees at larger businesses continues to decline, but there is an end in sight to the multi-decade trend. According to the Hackett Group, the ongoing decline in U.S. and European IT jobs is directly attributable to offshoring, and is probably going to continue for at least the next several years. That said, the IT offshoring trend will likely dry up over the next 10 years as companies run out of jobs suitable for offshoring to low-cost countries.

Image by USDAgov.

Um mercado de profissionais disputados

Mudar de emprego ao longo da carreira de um profissional é normal, válido e necessário. Mas a partir do momento em que mudanças constantes transformam-se em quase rotinas para os empregados e empregadores, entretanto, algo mais pode estar errado. Este pode ser o caso visto atualmente no Brasil.

Segundo a consultoria Hyas Executive, a grande demanda por especialistas em Tecnologia da Informação (TI) e a pouca oferta de profissionais bem qualificados dessa área no maior país da América Latina faz com que estes sejam os profissionais que mais mudam de emprego no país, conforme conta o veículo especializado Computer World.

Smartphones Change the Game for CIOs

The continuing proliferation of smartphones is changing the game for CIOs. Your employees and customers are most likely connecting to the Internet via smartphone or other mobile device, meaning both internally and externally facing solutions must be adapted and optimized for mobile access.

According to a recent report from comScore, “Mobile Future in Focus 2013,” more than 125 million US consumers have smartphones and more than 50 million now own tablets. As a result, comScore says there is a “new paradigm of digital media fragmentation where consumers are always connected.”

Outsourcing Buyers Seek New Technology Capabilities

While outsourcing buyers still rank the same three factors in selecting a provider in 2012 as they did in 2009, a number of new technology capabilities which were not on buyers’ radar screens in 2009 have become important to provider selection.

As revealed by the findings of a recent IDC webinar, ““The Pulse of Outsourcing Q4 2012,” the three most important factors in outsourcing provider selection in 2012 – full range of IT and business process services, proven record of delivering on SLAs (service level agreements) and costs, and financial stability – are ranked the same as they were in 2009.

However, the percentages of respondents citing a full range of IT and business process services and a proven record of delivering on SLAs and costs were much lower in 2012 than 2009, while the percentage selecting financial stability slightly increased. More interesting is the appearance of several new factors selected by significant percentages of respondents in 2012 that did not appear in the 2009 IDC survey of BPO buyers.

An Evolving IT Industry Means the Demise of Many Traditional IT Job Roles

We are used to thinking of the IT industry as the driver of change in other industries and in business in general, but the IT industry itself is obviously impacted by rapid technological evolution as well. The first decade of the 21st century has ushered in a raft of new innovations in the IT industry, and these new technologies are changing the way virtually everyone in information technology works and even the way people conceive of their jobs.

Virtualization Data Protection Demands Attention

The typical CIO has an overflowing “to-do” list of items that are virtually all “mission critical.” Inevitably, tasks that literally must be performed to keep the IT enterprise running, such as server maintenance, take precedence over tasks which are equally critical but do not immediately shut down the enterprise if performed improperly, such as security.

And when you’re talking about a specific subset of security, such as virtualization data protection, then it is almost certain CIOs will first focus their attention elsewhere. Thus it is not surprising, but still an ominous sign, that a new CIO survey from backup, replication and virtualization management solutions provider Veeam Software shows numerous weaknesses in overall enterprise virtualization data protection levels.

Chief Digital Officers Transform 21st Century Business

The C-suite has gotten a lot more crowded in the last decade or two. It used to just be CEOs, CFOs and COOs, but by the 1990s chief scientific officers and chief information officers were also becoming the norm. Fast forward to the 21st century and the C-suite grew even larger as tech companies such as Google and Facebook started hiring chief technology officers, chief privacy officers, chief strategy officers, chief digital officers and even chief people officers.

TweeksBI Eleven: Real Time

Last week I received a call from a sales representative of a teleconference solutions provider, referring to a request I made about video-conference software. It took me a few seconds to recall that, in fact, three weeks back I had called the company. I was trying to buy the $50 PC-based version of their software, so I could video conference with my colleagues sitting in a boardroom in Mexico. My first surprise was to find that the software was not available for download. Then I tried an old-school solution by looking for the software at Staples and OfficeMax, but no luck. So, I stepped back in time even further, and called the company looking to buy the software, hoping they could FedEx it overnight. Then they surprised me with yet another vintage approach: “I’ll be glad to pass your information to one of our resellers, as that is the only channel we use. They’ll get in touch with you ‘pronto’.” After that, I’m not surprised that their fast response time was three weeks. Obviously my solution at this point was to use one of the many options available, which include Skype, Apple’s Facetime or Google Hangouts. No hassle, no money, no middle man.

2012 – A Year of Disaster for IT Services

According to urban legend, 2012 was supposed to have been a year of apocalyptic disaster due to the ancient Mayan calendar ending on Dec. 21 of last year. Of course Dec. 21 came and went with nothing more than bad weather in the Northeast and life continued as always.

But perhaps the ancient Mayans were really looking ahead to the performance of the global IT services market. According to new analysis from research firm Ovum, 2012 could be considered a year of disaster from the standpoint of IT services providers. Aided by especially poor fourth quarter performance, annual IT services contract activity during 2012 fell to its lowest level since 2002 in terms of total contract value (TCV) and deal volume.

Global IT Services Market to Grow 3.5% in 2013

The global ITO market is set to grow 3.5% in 2013, according to recent projections from HfS Research. While ITO performance in the Europe, Middle East Asia (EMEA) market is expected to continue to be poor this year, HfS expects recovering growth in North America as well as increased demand for IT infrastructure services in non-traditional markets to compensate.

Total market size for the global ITO industry is expected to reach $648 billion this year, with professional services representing $309 billion of the total. Application development and maintenance (ADM) outsourcing will represent another $70 billion, while IT infrastructure management will drive $143 billion in 2013 revenue.