The answer is a resounding �no.� In fact, EquaTerra research has found that offshoring will continue to grow, and grow faster proportionally than overall third-party services spend, with no wall in sight. For example, more than one-half of ITO buyers in Europe that are currently using near/offshore services plan to increase usage going forward, and less than 10 percent plan to do less global sourcing. Eighty-six (86) percent of FAO buyers globally use either near or offshore provisioning, and 60 percent plan to increase use of global sourcing going forward. And according to the service providers polled for EquaTerra�s 3Q10 Pulse survey, the most commonly cited activity was buyers pushing for more outsourced work to be performed in low cost/offshore locations, scoring at 3.71 on a scale of one-to-five, where one represents very uncommon/infrequently undertaken, and five represents very common/frequently undertaken.

The above primarily relates to the private sector, and Europe�s public sector, especially the U.K. government, seems to be taking a similar stance. For example, the U.K. government is leaning toward more offshoring and outsourcing under the new conservative government which is looking for shorter term fixes to cut spending by �83 billion to shore up the mounting debt load.