One of the major denominators of Web 2.0 is ‘online collaboration’. As Don Tapscott puts it in his book ‘wikinomics’: ‘The old notion that you have to attract, develop, and retain the best and brightest inside your corporate boundaries is becoming null. With the cost of collaboration falling precipitously, companies can increasingly source ideas, innovations and uniquely qualified minds from a vast global pool of talent’.

While offshoring has been growing in popularity over the past 10 years, the real breakthrough is yet to come. And while Linux started about 15 years ago, the open source movement has only started to gain momentum.

Many people describe offshoring as a ‘hype’ and believe it will start declining. But considering the major benefits a company can achieve from offshore outsourcing, why would it be a hype? People are merely ‘getting used’ to working with people on the other side of the globe. Standard ways of working are being developed and choices are being made between captive offices or working with a vendor. Once it becomes ‘normal’, any job that can be done with the use of a PC screen can be done from any place in the world. With the high western wages and the problems of finding skilled people, offshoring will grow into a normal way of doing business.

Companies are still used to the idea of having to keep the people inside their company. They perceive knowledge as major competitive advantage and believe this can only be sustained by keeping the people on the payroll. With more work moving offshore, this perception will change and people will start realizing that having a lean organization within a strong network will create a much stronger competitive edge then the old notion of ‘do it yourself’.