According to Gartner Inc., the worldwide market for Testing Services is forecast to grow to US$ 13 billion by 2010, with 45-50 percent (around US$ 6 billion) getting outsourced. Indian IT-BPO players generated export revenues of about US$ 280 million from Testing Services in 2006.

Most of the Indian IT Player have thrown their hat in, for this play. The testing service line is the one of the significant growth areas for the business. Nasscom has an interesting article on the same, below are some excerpts:

Software testing is one of the fastest growing segments within the IT services industry. Though, on an average, software services are growing at about 10-12 percent, testing is growing at more than 50 percent per annum.Leading IT companies in India today derive up to 10 percent of their revenues from their independent software testing businesses.

According to a META Group study, the testing business (offshore outsourced independent) in India itself was US$ 200 million in 2003-04 and was expected to jump to US$ 700 million to $1 billion by the end of 2007. Global product developers were increasingly turning to India to undertake offshore testing of their offerings to leverage the country's cost and skills advantages.

Of all the challenges faced by the industry, the most crucial was the paucity of skilled manpower  In 2006 alone, there was a shortfall of 15,000 software testing professionals in India. This shortfall is stated to be a result of the following:

- The fact that young professionals are not aware of the career potential of the testing market.  

- The lack of higher business domain knowledge, process knowledge and client management skills among testing professionals, a major requirement for the market.

- The absence of training and learning programs that cater specially to this market. As specialized software testing as a career has emerged only in the last 7-10 years, academic institutes.

Source: 1

Tags: it - india - offshore - testing+services

Prashanth Rai