Gartner's Global Survey

The titans of outsourcing are still trying to digest the accounting scandal at Satyam Computer Services (SAY), the fourth-largest outsourcing provider in India. The longtime chairman is out and the company is struggling to survive following his admission of massive fraud at Satyam. Now customers that had outsourced much of their IT-related work to Satyam are wondering whether they should shift their business elsewhere.

As they do, the debate about what country is the best outsourcing destination is heating up again. In December, market research group Gartner (IT) issued a report looking at countries around the world, measuring their ability to compete in outsourcing by looking at criteria such as cost, language skills, and infrastructure. Gartner analysts looked at 10 such criteria and gave grades of excellent, very good, good, fair, and poor. We assigned points to each grade—excellent received 5 points; very good, 4; good, 3; fair, 2; poor, 1—and came up with overall scores for each company. Read on to see which countries came out on top and why.