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When Everdream Corp. began growing faster than CEO Gary Griffiths and his executives could hire skilled workers, it became clear that the Fremont online desktop management company would need to outsource some of the workload.
With a plethora of call center providers angling for business, Mr. Griffiths decided outsourcing some of Everdream's help desk functions would make the most sense. "We didn't think at the time that running a help desk was a core competency of ours," he remembers. 'At the end of the story of course, we concluded that it really was."
The evolution of that story weaves a cautionary tale about one company's effort to balance the cost and scalability advantages of offshoring work with the ill-defined pitfalls. As Silicon Valley companies and, indeed, corporations nationwide scramble to keep up with the competition by moving technical support work and other technology jobs overseas, some who made the move in the last few years now quietly are returning home.
But the return flow of jobs from overseas is not even a measurable percentage of the work flooding offshore into India, China, the Philippines, the former Soviet Union, South America and many more emerging markets. One in 10 U.S. information technology jobs will move overseas this year alone, according to a study by Gartner Forrester Research projects that 3.3 million service, or non-manufacturing, jobs will move offshore by 2015, accounting for roughly $136 billion in wages.
Against that tsunami of offshoring, Everdream's 40-odd help desk jobs are but ocean spray But Mr Griffiths, who insists he remains an advocate of offshoring, believes Everdream's experience in Costa Rica mirrors difficulties that far-larger companies contend with, often unexpectedly, every day.
"India, Siberia, California...