Facebook, the multi-billion dollar leading social networking site to date, launches its first Asian operations office in India, to better facilitate its continuous increase in users. There are over 400 million Facebook users and 100 million Facebook Mobile users and these figures are growing fast.

According to Facebook, the operations office is located in Hyderabad, and will have teams in charge of advertising and developer support. The office will work in conjunction with their other offices in Palo Alto, California; Austin, Texas; and Dublin, Ireland.

Situating their latest centre in India, and following the sun, Facebook aims to establish support centres in different time zones, with 24-hour support and available in different languages.

Don Faul, global online operations director says, “We expect our new office in Hyderabad to tap into the region’s strong pool of talented people who understand operations and technology, and help us more effectively serve the needs of our users, advertisers and developers around the world.”

Since its inception in 2004, the number of Facebook users has rapidly and steadily climbed to over 400 million worldwide. It already has an estimated 8 million users in India.

According to Call Point New Europe, outsourcing companies are on the edge of creating more than 2,500 jobs in Bulgaria this year. This particular sector has also produced 20 percent more jobs in Eastern Europe in 2009 than in 2008.

Apparently, the increase in Bulgaria is stronger than the average increase for Eastern Europe, and this development is expected to continue for the reason that the country “offers good potential, quality services and low cost,” Filip Ugrinov, CEO of Call Point New Europe advises.

Urginov considers that in Bulgaria the outsourcing industry could provide work for as many as 40, 000 people in a few years, whereas the present number stands at about 5,000.

“Bulgaria is the most appealing country in Europe at the moment.” The criteria the agency cites are “salaries, infrastructure, taxes and financial attractiveness,” quoted from the AT Kearney consulting agency data.

Technology giant Microsoft has increased the amount of legal work that they outsource, having now signed an agreement with CPA Global, a legal outsourcing provider in India.

Word about the deal spread after Microsoft slashed its legal budget by 15% resulting in a significant decrease in in-house legal department employees. Prior to the budget cut, Microsoft’s legal department had 1,050 staff and a $900 M annual budget.

Assistant General Counsel of Microsoft, Marty Shively, who is now based in India, has been keeping an eye on their company’s outsourcing opportunities.  He says, “We have been outsourcing legal work in the area of patent and trademark to CPA Global and Wipro. We already have a 5-year relationship with CPA Global and hope to strengthen it in the future.”

The majority of the legal work that Microsoft is outsourcing is associated with patent and trademark, docketing and complex portfolio analysis. From time to time, 100 percent of the work has been outsourced and occasionally Microsoft only outsourced sections that can be quickly completed in India.

For businesses looking at cutting their costs and focusing on their core business through outsourcing work, it is wise to consider nearshoring as a potential alternative.

Savings from nearshoring are not as significant as offshoring, however it is still less expensive compared to operating in places such as Australian mainland capital cities. According to Access Economics’ industry report, the cost difference between near shoring in Tasmania and off shoring to India or the Philippines in certain circumstances may be comparable.

Although the global perception is that outsourcing work to Asia is economically advantageous because of lower labour costs, there may be operating expenses and risk factors to be considered in the total cost and these may impact the price difference between nearshoring and offshoring.

At first glance, offshoring is inexpensive, but it may have hidden costs.

According to Access Economics’ findings, there are indirect costs in the advertised price of Indian and Philippine offshore contact centres. These indirect costs comprise higher staff training requirements, management fees, charges for overseas calls, increased rates for call escalation, spending for international travel, and risks caused by changes in the socio-political environment of the offshore location. There are also added costs because of lower quality where, from a customer’s viewpoint, service from an offshore contact centre is less satisfying compared to service from a local or nearshore contact centre. Considering all these costs and risks may make offshoring more expensive than it initially seems, and this lessens its cost advantage substantially.

NEC, Fujitsu to boost outsourcing

The Wall Street Journal reported that Asia’s contract chip producers expect to see their earnings get better this year, as the global financial revival boosts demand, along with more semiconductor companies globally come across to outsource additional production.

Increasing outsourcing orders, particularly from Japanese incorporated device producers such as NEC Electronics and Fujitsu Microelectronics, are expected to raise the earnings of contract chip manufacturers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and United Microelectronics of Taiwan, analysts claim.

Both NEC and Fujitsu are IDMs – established domestic chip producers that handle semiconductor manufacturing. However, as they keep on fighting back with losses, analysts say they are likely to increase outsourcing to keep production costs.

TV producers anticipate Sony outsourcing

According to DigiTimes, Taiwan-based LCD TV manufacturers are likely to account for a big segment of the OEM orders from Sony as the vendor aims to raise its outsourcing capacity, particularly Sony’s three existing associates Wistron, Foxconn Electronics and Compal Electronics.

Sony’s strategy is to boost LCD TV OEM sales, primarily for cheap models, to as much as 40% of its full LCD TV shipments amount in its 2010 financial year. Sony begins discussing among its OEM partners for LCD TV orders for 2011, which may cost up to 15 million units.

Sony distributed 5.4 million LCD TVs in its fiscal third-quarter 2009, up 8% on year. However, proceeds from the partial fall down to $3.76 billion.

Xerox’s BPO industry should deliver

When a company outsources their IT or other business processes, the outsourced firm comes up with a less expensive and more efficient way of handling the work outsourced to them, and that’s valuable. Despite this, outsourced firms rarely reinvent a process entirely – because it’s extremely difficult.

Now that Xerox has spent $6.4 billion in buying ACS, a major player in the business process outsourcing industry, it’s that kind of reinvention that they must deliver.

The call center outsourcing industry has been acknowledged as one of the main factors that underpinned India as a global economic power. Such unprecedented growth comes at a price, and the country’s outsourced workers are paying for it.

Many young professionals who work for the outsourcing industry are starting to realise that behind excellent compensation and appealing career possibilities are seemingly never ending hours of appeasing irate customers, hard to meet quotas, long night shifts, disrupted eating and sleeping schedules, constant deadline pressure.

As a result, outsourced workers suffer from backaches, migraines, anxiety, sleep disorders, depression, obesity, and broken relationships. These may have further consequences later on such as heart, kidney, or liver disease, diabetes, chronic mental illness, or even suicide.

The problems that outsourcing industry workers encounter have gotten worse ever since the global economic downturn last year. Fear of losing their jobs has only added to the daily pressure they have to overcome.

Karuna Baskar, Director of the counselling firm 1to1help.net, says the number of workers coming in with mental health issues such as bi-polar disorder and suicidal tendencies has increased dramatically.

Many outsourced workers come straight from universities and into their first jobs with little or no real life experience. They struggle to adjust from the freedom of a school environment to the more rigorous and disciplined office environment, but there are those who cannot cope, reveals Aashu Calapa. Calapa, Executive VP of HR for Firstsource Solutions, claims that the outsourcing industry loses a percentage of its workers due to stress. These young men and women are not stress hardy and do not have the life experience required to handle some times very aggressive customers and tend to take abuse personally.

Many of these young knowledge workers unwind by spending their hard-earned money by living recklessly. Work and peer pressure, plus the fast lifestyle make their lives more taxing, and not everyone can juggle these western standards along with other more conservative traditional aspects of their lives.

The outsourcing industry is apprehensive at what really goes on with its workers. There are companies that have already taken steps to help their workers, such as providing doctors, on-call counsellors, nutritionists, health benefit, and gym facilities.

A new Sydney-based chief of global outsourcing and infrastructure services for the Asia Pacific region has been selected by Unisys.

The full responsibility for Unisys outsourcing business in Asia Pacific was taken over by Australian Scott Whyman, who has been promoted to the position of VP and general manager for Global Outsourcing and Infrastructure Services (GOIS).

Most recently, Whyman was based in Singapore as VP and general manager for Unisys Asia, that has China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, The Philippines, and Singapore under its scope. He has 25 years of IT and outsourcing expertise as well as 15 years of working experience at Unisys.

Whyman was a former sales and general manager in Unisys Australia and New Zealand, and prior to joining Unisys he was the managing director of the PCS Group, a private Australian technology and services firm. He was also the divisional chief marketing officer for Australian Consolidated Press (ACP).

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