Introduction

Abstract

According to Meta Group, almost all global companies will have outsourced some of their information technology requirements by 2006. While this appears to be an amazing statistic, it is perhaps not surprising that outsourcing — both of IT and business processes — is becoming so prevalent given the apparent benefits. From the customer’s perspective, a service provider agrees to take over part of their business and perform those services to the same or a higher standard for a lower cost. As more companies start doing this, it is simply not cost effective for a business to maintain specialist, non-core services in-house when the market can deliver such services to a level and for a price that cannot be matched internally.