The early bird catches the worm – so the old saying goes. So here we are with two months of the year left to run and already the advisory firm Equaterra (now incorporating Morgan Chambers since the acquisition in September) has started sending out its predictions for outsourcing in 2008. It’s the first of the 2008 lists I have seen, but I am expecting them to flood in over the coming weeks.

Anyway, the full list of predictions from Equaterra of the important trends for 2008 is:

•    Outsourcing is recession-proof.  IT outsourcing Demand in North America will improve in 2008.
•    Europe will experience more growth than the US, perhaps because it is at an earlier stage of the outsourcing evolutionary cycle.
•    Public sector demand will continue to grow as baby boomers retire and the sector struggles with attracting talent.  Shared services and internal transformation in this sector will get stronger.
•    Recent turmoil in credit markets will slow outsourcing in the financial services sector in the short term but drive more IT outsourcing in the longer term.  Financial services firms will also continue to pursue offshore captives but often within the region rather than in India or China for various regulatory and risk reasons.
•    Global multi-shore and multi-provider outsourcing will become more the norm than the exception. This could mean several providers in several regions around the world.
•    Indian service providers will set up more local delivery services centres in US and Europe as the Indian market gets impacted by wage inflation; talent attrition; stronger rupee and infrastructure strain.
•    Canada‘s appeal as a near-shore destination will lessen due to currency appreciation.
•    A confluence of factors will lead to the expansion of service-delivery capabilities beyond India to regions like Central/South America, Central/Eastern Europe and China.
•    Governance of outsourcing deals will become paramount as buyers seek to maximise value and minimise value leakage.

This is a good and broad list of trends, and I believe that they are all important, but it is interesting to observe a few that seem to be missing in action. Almost every IT supplier I talk to at present is also talking about:

•    Innovation; how suppliers can work in partnership to drive innovation to their clients
•    Green Agenda; how the IT industry has to start taking notice of the corporate carbon footprint and how suppliers are going to have to start dancing to the tune of green service buyers pretty soon
•    Web 2.0; how the tools that every teenager is already using are transferring into corporate life and the IT suppliers are at the vanguard of trying to sell this expertise

By the end of the year I’ll think of a comprehensive list of my own trend observations to write up for this blog.