Egypt Unrest Threatens Status as Rising Outsourcing Star
Egypt was dubbed an up-and-coming outsourcing destination by industry watchers in late 2010. But this week's dramatic political unrest puts that reputation at risk -- and serves as a warning to IT to plan for the geopolitical risks that can flare in offshore outsourcing locales.
CIO — What happens if the country you outsource to suddenly goes dark?
Early adopters of Egyptian IT and business process services are finding out today. Egypt's government reportedly blocked all Internet and cell phone service overnight Thursday as anti-government protests continued in the North African nation.
This political unrest and network shutdown come just three months after Egypt's information technology minister announced that the country wanted to boost its annual outsourcing industry revenues from slightly more than $1 billion to $10 billion by 2020, by investing $15 million to bolster local IT businesses and intellectual property protection.
Egypt's concerted effort to brand itself as an offshore IT services alternative appeared to be working: Many outsourcing analysts have recently been calling the country of 80 million a credible outsourcing option, particularly for European companies in a similar time zone.
[Where are today's riskiest outsourcing locales? See CIO.com's "Offshoring: The 25 Most Dangerous Cities for Outsourcing in 2010."]
The European Outsourcing Association named Egypt its 2010 outsourcing destination of the year. "Egypt is a rising destination and well suited to support multinational corporations for their Africa and even Middle East operations," said Atul Vashistha, CEO of offshoring consultacy NeoAdvisory. "We see capabilities in both call centers and IT."
Among the services industry companies with significant operations in Egypt are HSBC which has a global service center to support its Middle East Operations, Alcatel-Lucent which sources technical support for its Africa, Middle East, and South Asia locations, Indian outsourcer Wipro which operates a local IT service center, and IBM (IBM) which operates a nanotechnology center.
Timing Will Matter
The turbulence could have an impact on the country's reputation as an outsourcing destination if its lasts beyond the weekend, says Anand Ramesh, global sourcing research director for outsourcing consultancy Everest Group. "Given that Egypt is an emerging geography, it heightens concern around risk, as opposed to more established location like India or the Philippines. The degree of sensitively to risk in emerging market is much higher," Ramesh explains.
"If it dies down over the weekend and quickly stabilizes, many will view this as a one-off event," Ramesh says. "If it persists beyond that, it would raise concerns much more significantly."
Others are less optimistic about Egypt's ability to recover from the damage to its reputation. "The rolling wave of social and political pressures that has now hit Egypt will take them off the list of rational choice for an offshore location when compared with established locations such as India or emerging locations such as Uruguay," says Ben Trowbridge, CEO of outsourcing consultancy Alsbridge.
