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-By Jayan CM
India is witnessing a severe shortage of skilled IT resources at all levels and also facing the daunting challenge of attrition. At such instance companies must consider offshore outsourcing to obtain high-end IT services, said Gartner Inc.
According to Gartners Linda Cohen, vice president and distinguished analyst "India's local service providers lack ample focus on the domestic market, thus widening the demand-supply gap by not dispensing enough quality resources for Indian customers". As always service providers typically distribute the best resources to their global flagship customers that pay in dollars and earn better margins. This is predominantly true with Indian service providers."
Resource hungry Indian offshore service providers and demand for skilled IT personnel by initiatives like the Indian governments recent national e-governance program (NEGP) are outdoing local supply. Rapid economic growth in India to some extend is also worsening the problem. Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in India's local IT companies are finding it hard to manage the shortage of skilled local IT resources as internal business units become even more demanding in the area of IT requirements and schedules.
India is experiencing huge economic growth. The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the country grew at 9.2 percent last year (2006-2007), which was second only to China among the major economies of the world. A recent Gartner survey conducted among more than 1,400 CIOs worldwide showed that IT budgets in India had the highest growth of 16.19 percent, compared with an average of 3.16 per cent in the rest of the world.
Gartner suggest that with the present circumstances and challenges Indian CIOs should look beyond their own geographical boundaries, just like their Western counterparts. Analyst predicts that Indian companies will increasingly go offshore in their sourcing strategies, and get IT skills from nearby Singapore and Hong Kong. This will result in outsourcing deals offered by Indian companies that include higher end parts of service delivered from other parts of the world.
This model of outsourcing has already shown the initial signs of penchant. For example, the Indian embassy assigned its visa collection and delivery services to a U.S. company. Similarly many Indian IT firms with operations spread across the Europe and U.S. are now started outsourcing a part of their administrative work locally." This global sourcing model will again become business-as-usual for Indian IT companies" says Gartner.
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