The outsourcing market in Thailand is worth around seven to eight billion baht (US$228 million) out of an overall IT services market of 30 billion baht (US$856 million), according to Attaphon Satidkanitkul, IDC's senior analyst for IT services research in Southeast Asia.
Currently, discrete outsourcing--which is made up of short contracts and smaller projects of under than 500 million baht (US$14 million) in value--is more widely adopted because the scope of services can be clearly defined and costs can be controlled. For instance, desktop management is based just on the number of PCs and service levels with a short-term one-year agreement.
The current economic crisis is a positive driver for outsourcing as businesses now have to consider using discrete outsourcing as well as extended maintenance service contracts rather than buying new hardware systems, he noted.
In comparison, enterprise-wide outsourcing with long term contracts of five years and up amount to two billion baht (US$57 million). Long term agreements are less flexible in service activities and with hard to measure results. After 2005, corporations in Thailand, especially in the banking and finance sectors have changed their behavior from enterprise-wide outsourcing to discrete outsourcing. The turning point was the introduction of service level agreements as a tool for measuring the service level, explained Satidkanitkul.
The next trend is the adoption of managed services which is an evolution of discrete outsourcing, such as managed security services. This year, IT services is the only category that will still see double-digit growth.
Play video
There are currently no comments for this post.