The supply of global services is highly concentrated among a small group of firms from a handful of countries. As shown in Table 2, 13 of these firms are headquartered in North America, four are headquartered in India, and three are based in Europe. The large global service providers operating in the offshore industry include: IBM, Accenture, EDS (HP Enterprise Services), Computer Science Corporation (CSC), and Capgemini, which are principally dedicated to serving large multinational corporations and governments (Datamonitor, 2009). All of these firms have operations in developing countries that serve as platforms for services exports. In 2007, Accenture employed more people in India than anywhere else in the world.<sup>2</sup> By 2006, IBM had 60,000 employees in India and Capgemini employees there had reached 12,000 (Dossani & Kenney, 2007).

# **D. Potential for Developing Countries to Enter the Offshore Services Industry**

The offshore services industry is a comparatively new industry that has only emerged within the past 20 years. The ICT revolution at the end of the 20<sup>th</sup> century allowed developing countries to enter this market with great success. India and the Philippines have already reached market maturity, while countries in Eastern Europe and South America are in the early to mid stages of development. In many of these nations, offshore services have been the fastest growing industry in recent years. This has led to significant positive externalities for local economies, such as knowledge transfer, more and better jobs, access to new markets, and infrastructure improvements.

The offshore services industry provides an opportunity for many developing economies that are striving to diversify and upgrade their economic activities. The global industry is still in its nascent stages and the vast majority of its potential remains largely untapped. The McKinsey Global Institute Labor Supply Report estimates that up to 161 million jobs can be performed remotely. It states that “any task that requires no physical or complex interaction between an employee and customers or colleagues, and requires little or no local knowledge, could be performed anywhere in the world by a suitable qualified person” (McKinsey Global Institute, 2009).

Figure 5 illustrates this significant growth potential of the offshore services industry. The orange bars represent the adoption of offshore practices in the years 2003 (dark orange) and 2008 (light orange). In just 5 years (2003-2008), this industry has demonstrated rapid growth. However, the dark grey line presents the vast opportunities that still exist to offshore activities across different industries. The graph also highlights the emergence of new segments in the value chain, including industry-specific offshoring in retail banking and the health care industry.

Nonetheless, global employment in offshore services had already reached 4.1 million by 2008 (McKinsey Global Institute, 2009). This growth is being driven by an increasing number of business procurement services abroad to improve their efficiency levels in the global economy, enter new markets, and gain access to strategic assets in other countries (Lopez et al., 2008).

> 2 At the end of 2007 FY, Capgemini’s  Indian operations added at least 8,000 new employees to take the figure from the current 27,000 to a new high of 35,000, surpassing for the first time the number of employees in the United States (Shah, 2007).

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