With the increasing number of businesses incorporating the Internet into their operations, information technology (IT) outsourcing plays a leading role in what is now called the “outsourcing revolution.” According to IDC, a Massachusetts-based market research firm, spending on IT outsourcing reached $56 billion in 2000 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2005 (Source: The Outsourcing Institute). Businesses have realized that to be successful on the Web, they would have to devote more time, expertise, and bandwidth.
Kauai Publishing Company, Mother Earth News, and Sound Choice are among those that have contracted offshore IT work with Outsourcing Solutions, Inc. (OSI).
Hawaii-based Kauai Publishing publishes and distributes a daily, The Garden Island, and two other bi-monthly publications, Kauai Beach Press and Japanese Beach Press, in addition to maintaining two websites: kauaiworld.com and thegardenisland.com. OSI does document conversion work for Kauai Publishing, which gives online subscribers access to PDF versions of these dailies on the Internet. OSI also provides website archiving and maintenance work to these sites.
Mother Earth News, published by Ogden Publications, is one of America’s leading magazines on sustainable, self-reliant living. The Topeka, Kansas-based publication contracted OSI to do some web archiving work involving HTML conversion as well as abstract creation of the magazine’s back issues beginning in the 1950s. OSI also developed a search utility engine for its website (see motherearthnews.com).
The North Carolina–based music company Sound Choice, which produces karaoke musical tracks in CD+G format, has experienced widespread theft and piracy. In 2001, Sound Choice tasked OSI to do Internet research and surveillance. This has resulted in the apprehension of hackers and illegal traders of Sound Choice–copyrighted material.
Aside from IT outsourcing work, OSI provides other services such as data input/data entry and data capture; document transcription; OCR/scanning work; encoding; keying/keyboarding; copyediting, indexing, book formatting and styling; typesetting; tagging; proofreading; website design; cover design; IT consulting.
