Opportunities in the Asia-Pacific IT outsourcing services market are sky-rocketing, with IT outsourcing in Australia alone worth AU$2.95 billion in 2000 and expected to growth at a rate of 14 percent until 2004.
However, natural-born Australian service providers are still not pulling their weight, up against global players that have got every game covered.
"The outsourcing market is very competitive and there are not a lot of natural-born players competing in the regional spectrum," IDC's senior analyst Asia-Pacific outsourcing, Phil Hassey, told ZDNet.
Although there are a few Australian players, they aren't making dramatic inroads into Asia Pacific, according to Hassey, overshadowed by the 'big three' multi-national players - IBM GSA, EDS and CSC.
Even second-tier players such as Andersen Consulting and PricewaterhouseCoopers, don't really come close to touching the market leaders, Hassey said.
Under pressure to penetrate the Asian market, Hassey believes Australian IT outsourcing vendors must now adapt to the political, cultural and economic characteristics of the individual countries rather than merely dropping their established, domestic models into these economies.
"There's no basket model," Hassey said. "There are 14 to 15 different countries in Asia Pacific and they must fine tune their [domestic] models to each."
Used to entering new markets, the global players have the whole game covered.
"They've got the track record of doing it," Hassey said. Furthermore, "they've already got a presence in virtually every country in the [Asia-Pacific] region," he added.
Meanwhile, many Australian service providers are talking about penetrating the Asian arena, but "action and words are different things," Hassey said.
