This study examines the influence of the offshore players on the IT and business services markets through analysis of contracts in IDC's comprehensive contracts database, which contains over 8,300 contracts captured since 1995. For the purpose of this study, contracts signed in 2004, 2005, and 1H06 and totaling over 3,300 have been analyzed.

The analysis is based on contracts from close to 500 individual companies of which 28 were classified as pure-play offshore providers, i.e. a key selling point for the company in going to market is its ability to offer lower cost service delivery through presence in lower labor cost countries.