Changing Face of IT Outsourcing in 2010s

The reasons for IT Outsourcing to come into existence have been cost reduction and the freedom to concentrate on the core activities of the business while letting a third party handle the non-core functions. It saved the outsourcer a lot of time, effort and money which enabled them to manage better. Outsourcing also provided the companies with the latest technologies without having the need to purchase or update it.
IT outsourcing has evolved and come a long way from being merely a cost effective solution to becoming a huge part of business strategies for companies. It has become a process for business which provides value and purpose. Its strategic value can help a business grow, and become better. Few of the growing trends are:

1. Cloud - The biggest trend and development for IT outsourcing is cloud computing. There are a number of big organizations like google, amazon and Microsoft. Cloud services such as SaaS, IaaS and Paas help the IT outsourcing by providing infrastructure, software and platform solutions from any part of the world to any location.
2. The big deals that were a trend a few years back have broken up into smaller more effective deals, which allow a lot more flexibility to both the outsourcer and the buyer.
3. Automation, the number of processes that are being automated has been on the rise and will continue to increase. This trend has had a huge impact on IT outsourcing both positive and negative, and will be touched upon a little further in this article.

These above mentioned trends can be attributed to the changing face of technology and the need for efficiency. The entrance of cloud computing has definitely helped IT outsourcing to stay afloat as both outsourcing and cloud are cost effectiveness measures. Even though your outsourced process lies with another company, with the help of cloud one retains access to all the work and documentation needed from anywhere in the world at any time. While some of these trends have proven to be a boon for the IT outsourcing industry and there are a few which have worked against it. According to some researchers countries like India and china which have been the hub for outsourcing are to some extent reaching their threshold which has directly led to the decline in the growth of outsourcing. The increasing standard of living and rise in salaries only furthers the falling.
Automation is another such trend which has assisted in the decline of IT outsourcing. On one hand it has helped the industry by making the mundane process easier and faster. The processes which have become automated do not need to be outsourced anymore, leading to its decline. Trends change and needs are created this is what led to the birth of outsourcing in the first place, as it is said, change is the only constant. It yet remains to be seen if the changing visage of IT outsourcing will make it bigger than it is or contribute to its decrepitude.