Services outsourcing usually refers to business activities in which enterprises focus on their main lines of activity and hire professional service providers to handle basic, non-essential Information Technology (IT) business functions and IT-based procedures of value to the company.

According to the estimates of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in the next 5 to 10 years, the global services outsourcing market will increase at an annual rate of 30% -40%. The data show that services outsourcing is becoming a new favorite in international business activities for its irreplaceable advantages. Besides, more and more international corporations begin to take part in service outsourcing, thus further expanding the market scale of service outsourcing.

The Report on 2008 Global Services Outsourcing Development makes an analysis of the large-scale service outsourcing business. This Report first analyzes the general situation, structure and the scale of the global services outsourcing market. The economy of the world cannot develop without China, neither can the services outsourcing business. In this Report, we also make an analysis of the status quo of the services outsourcing development in China.

Since the new century, the ever increasing services outsourcing has shown some new features which have been stated in the Report on 2008 Global Services Outsourcing Development. These new features include: 1) the range of services outsourcing is enlarging with each passing day; 2) China and Indian are gradually becoming the largest two service-outsourcing bases on the globe; 3) IT and finance dominates the service outsourcing; 4) more attention is being paid to the vertical market in global service outsourcing.

Of course, the development of global service outsourcing is influenced by various factors. In this regard, the Report tells us there are favorable factors that contribute to the development of global service outsourcing, but unfavourable factors do exist. The factorable factors are: incentive policies for service outsourcing adopted by various countries, the elimination of service trade barriers and technology advances that are beneficial to the development of service outsourcing, improvement in infrastructure and supporting scientific and technological ability of the developing countries and the extended scope of outsourcing which enlarges the market scale of global service outsourcing. While the unfavorable factors include the frequent anti-service globalization movements, the capacity of the outsourcing providers influencing the progress of global outsourcing and the issue of the intellectual property rights as well as the risks existing in business outsoucing.

Although the Report on 2008 Global Services Outsourcing Development tells us that in promoting the development of global service outsourcing, favorable and unfavorable factors coexist, looking into the future, we should see that nothing can hold back the development of the global service outsourcing. Therefore, the Report on 2008 Global Services Outsourcing Development points out that service outsourcing has become an irreversible trend in the new round of global industrial revolution and transfer. To be specific, the Report indicates that the global service outsourcing will show the following trends: heavy pressure on the global service outsourcing market in the short term but great potentials in the long term, centralized outsourcers and outsourcees, increasing proportion of high-tech business and growing competition among the service outsourcing providers.

Finally, the Report on 2008 Global Services Outsourcing Development gives a forecast of the future development of global services outsourcing.