EMEA dominates offshore rankings

10 European and three African countries make Gartner's list of 30 best offshore services destinations

EMEA countries dominate Gartner’s annual list of top offshore services destinations, although favourites such as Russia, Romania and Ukraine slipped back on certain metrics.

Gartner’s top-30 rankings rate countries according to 10 criteria including language, government support, labour pool, educational systems, infrastructure and cost.

The research will make interesting reading for both UK end users and channel firms looking to beef up their offshore provision strategies. Some 13 EMEA countries, including 10 in Europe, made the cut.

Nine Asia-Pacific countries were represented including undisputed leader India and potential challenger China. The balance was made up by eight Latin American countries.

Ian Marriott, research vice president at Gartner, said: “Sourcing managers and service providers should use the various ratings to help determine which locations are right for their individual organisations.”

Although EMEA fared well overall, Egypt, Slovakia and the Ukraine all fell back from ratings of “very good” to “good on cost attractiveness, while Russia fell from “good to fair" on this metric. Gartner said this indicated the cost pressure being exerted on them.

Meanwhile, in terms of educational systems, Russia slipped back from “very good” to “good”, while Hungary and Romania moved from “good” to “fair”.

The full list of the 30 providers is as follows:

• Americas: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama and Peru.

• Asia/Pacific: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

• Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA): Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Hungary, Mauritius, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Turkey and Ukraine.