Offshore Outsourcing
The book Offshore Outsourcing by Robinson & Kalakota (2004) defines offshore outsourcing as ‘the delegation of administration, engineering, research, development, or technical support processes to a third-party vendor in a lower-cost location’. Among the examples used in this book, the best is that of the San Francisco–based firm
Embarcadero Technologies, which is a leading provider of database and application lifecycle-management solutions in the USA. Embarcadero relies on Aztec Software, another firm with headquarters in California. Aztec Software has an offshore development centre in Bangalore, India, that develops the new integration product,
Embarcadero DT/Studio. The entire product lifecycle − from development to maintenance − takes place in India. Aztec’s work on the DT/Studio tool helped
Embarcadero to quickly establish a competitive market position for this particular product. There are many definitions of offshoring as outlined below, but most accept that it generally refers to the process of an organisation replacing services obtained from domestic providers with imported services (Greene 2006; Bhagwati et al. 2004).
Offshoring refers to the acquisition of intermediate inputs by companies (or governments) from locations outside the consumer country. “It is the crossing of international borders that distinguishes it from outsourcing in general’ (Kirkegaard, p.4
2005).
Offshore outsourcing can have far-reaching implications beyond those associated with onshore outsourcing. Various authors have made the assumption that the countries that send work offshore are primarily developed nations (Intriligator,
2001; Aspray, Mayadas & Vardi, 2006; Rajan 2004, Kedia & Lahiri, 2007). Most definitions assume that offshoring is directed to developing countries in the interest of saving costs; it was possible to shift the actual production location of services to lowcost countries in a manner theoretically transparent to end-users (Kirkegaard, 2005 ;
Chakraborty &
Embarcadero Technologies, which is a leading provider of database and application lifecycle-management solutions in the USA. Embarcadero relies on Aztec Software, another firm with headquarters in California. Aztec Software has an offshore development centre in Bangalore, India, that develops the new integration product,
Embarcadero DT/Studio. The entire product lifecycle − from development to maintenance − takes place in India. Aztec’s work on the DT/Studio tool helped
Embarcadero to quickly establish a competitive market position for this particular product. There are many definitions of offshoring as outlined below, but most accept that it generally refers to the process of an organisation replacing services obtained from domestic providers with imported services (Greene 2006; Bhagwati et al. 2004).
Offshoring refers to the acquisition of intermediate inputs by companies (or governments) from locations outside the consumer country. “It is the crossing of international borders that distinguishes it from outsourcing in general’ (Kirkegaard, p.4
2005).
Offshore outsourcing can have far-reaching implications beyond those associated with onshore outsourcing. Various authors have made the assumption that the countries that send work offshore are primarily developed nations (Intriligator,
2001; Aspray, Mayadas & Vardi, 2006; Rajan 2004, Kedia & Lahiri, 2007). Most definitions assume that offshoring is directed to developing countries in the interest of saving costs; it was possible to shift the actual production location of services to lowcost countries in a manner theoretically transparent to end-users (Kirkegaard, 2005 ;
Chakraborty &