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As companies begin to downsize and trim the fat globally, they are looking at outsourcing many operations to lower cost destinations. While undisputed leader in offshore services India and her greatest challenger in terms of potential scale China continue to remain top destinations for companies looking at cutting costs Vietnam and Thailand too have aggressively captured a larger share of the world outsourcing pie.
According to Gartner’s 30 Top countries for Offshore Services in 2008 report, 10 Asia Pacific countries made it to the list. Amongst them were Australia, China, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The IT research and advisory company said costs, language skills, cultural compatibility, time zone and travel time were important considerations in choosing these locations. Further, many customers preferred Australia, New Zealand and Singapore due to their mature environments while others outsourced to Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam for cost benefits.
The top 30 countries for offshore services were rated according to 10 criteria designed to help determine which locations are right for individual organizations. The 10 criteria were: language, government support, labor pool, infrastructure, educational system, cost, political and economic environment, cultural compatibility, global and legal maturity, and data and intellectual property security and privacy.
While the combination of skills, existing scale and future scalability gave India an advantage over other countries in the region, China, Thailand and Vietnam were rated less than “good” for language skills. Australia, New Zealand, China and Singapore were all rated high for infrastructure as well as education levels. On cost considerations Vietnam was voted as the best country while China, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand were also all voted above par. Sri Lanka was the only Asia Pacific country to drop out of the top 30 outsourcing countries list this year.
