No Slowdown in Offshoring for the Foreseeable Future
Orla O’Sullivan reports for Network Computing in an article entitled, Obama Not Impeding Offshoring, TATA Says, that the campaign pledge to slow the flow of work to cheaper labor markets, either by directly employing people abroad or by engaging third-party service providers based outside of the U.S. has not occurred and in fact may be on the upswing. O’Sullivan discussed this matter with one of India’s leading providers of offshoring services, TATA Consultancy Services.
A large portion of TATA’s services are to the financial services industry, and this segment is growing with actual IT Operations taking place as banks and other financial services firms send more and more work offshore. O’Sullivan further reports that back in October of 2008 TATA purchased Citigroup Global Services Limited, Citi’s Indian offshoring services unit providing business process outsourcing. TATA’s next step is to sell its’ banking software products in the US.
As Raymond Strecker, global consulting practice head for TATA North America, describes this current spurt of growth:
“Our infrastructure business is growing the fastest. That is, inside the glass house, or data center: remote server administration, server repair, network monitoring, and various infrastructure services.”
It appears that as banks find the need to cut costs in this current global economic slowdown, that more regulations will just force these institutions to become more creative. If a bank or financial services firm finds it uncomfortable to have operations offshore, there doesn’t seem to be any prohibition from employing onshore service providers who do have operations offshore and thus indirectly reaping the benefits of cost savings.
