Overseas outsourcing slows IT

According to numbers published by the US Department of Labour, the IT sector has slowed partly because of the amount of outsourcing overseas, writes the Salt Lake Onlooker.

In November, only 39 000 jobs were created with a scant 600 in the IT industry. In a report from TechServe Alliance, overall employment in the IT sector increased by 2.5% in 2010 though the outlook may be bright... if you work in Indo-China, the report says.

The CEO of US operations for Harvey Nash says while permanent hiring is taking place in IT within the US, outsourcing is actively being used to help keep costs down during the global recession.

Sri Lanka and China are emerging as key destinations for services investments, while Philippines has overtaken India as the top-ranked outsourcing centre, a report by IBM, a global information technology firm, has said, reveals Lanka Business Online.

In IBM's Global Location Trends report for 2010, Philippines claimed top place, displacing India for the first time in terms of estimated workers, and China overtook Sri Lanka. The island retained its position at number 12 while China moved to five, from 13 a year earlier.

"China is continuing its ascent as a services destination, and confirms it should not be considered anymore 'merely' the world's factory," the report says. "Sri Lanka is another Asian country that has succeeded in positioning itself as an alternative to India."

At this year's Radiological Society of North America conference in Chicago, some experts predicted an outsourced future for radiology: exams taken in America or the rest of the developed world would be read by highly trained radiologists in India for a fraction of the cost of a domestic doctor, says DotMed.

But those radiologists worried about losing their jobs to readers in Bangalore should have no fear, according to a new study. In an article appearing in a forthcoming edition of the British Journal of Industrial Relations, a pair of economists suggest radiology is too "extreme" for normal offshoring, and that the rise of the Indian teleradiologist is mostly media speculation.

"Truth wins out in the end and the story of US-radiology-to-India will soon lose its lustre," writes Frank Levy, an economics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Kyoung Hee-Yu, with the Australian School of Business.