It's time for another episode of "Duelling Analysts," where we here at the CIO Weblog take two analyst reports from competing firms, released on the same day and on the same general topic, and pit them head to head over their differing conclusions.

Today's contenders are McKinsey and Company and The Hackett Group. McKinsey released a report today entitled "Time to rethink offshoring?" while Hackett put out an e-mail alert this morning with the subject "Back-Office Globalization to See 50%+ Growth over Next Three Years Globalization of Back-Office Processes Expected to See 50%+ Growth over Next Three Years, According to New Study."

Taken literally, these arguments need not be in conflict; it's possible that globalization (which is the term Hackett has come up with to encompass various off-shoring operations) will in fact increase in the next three years even if, as McKinsey believes, it may be foolish to do so. But why does Hackett see the trend as positive while McKinsey, at the same time, believes it is a negative?

McKinsey, it turns out, is looking primarily at manufacturing. The skyrocketing oil market has clearly impacted some of the traditional advantages of off-shoring manufacturing processes, considering the increasing cost of transport. Purely informational offshoring doesn't suffer from this handicap, and Hackett is looking at business process and organic outsourcing, neither of which involve much transport of goods.

So it turns out there isn't much behind this edition of Duelling Analysts. But stay tuned, there's sure to be more conflicting opinions coming down the pipe.