The analyst yesterday projected 830,000 US services jobs will go abroad by 2005, a 40% increase in Forrester’s original calculations. Long term, Forrester predicts a slight increase in projections, saying 3.4 million jobs will go overseas by 2015 – up from 3.3 million.
Opening the annual GigaWorld IT Forum in Orlando, Florida, Forrester said publicized savings and pressure from senior management to define and offshore strategy are causing chief information officers (CIOs) to consider offshoring as a viable option.
Forrester, though, also found additional factors at play, including: the fact companies who started with small offshore projects will become more committed and ramp-up the services moved abroad; leading Indian suppliers like Wipro Technologies are expanding their services beyond application maintenance to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO); and extended off shore capabilities of vendors like IBM Corp and Accenture.
