Outsourcing, Offshoring, Exporting U.S. Jobs: Who's Most Likely to Do It? Who's Most Likely to...

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 6, 2004

Data Released Today from KnowledgeStorm and The AlignIT Group Profiles

Companies Amid Controversial Outsourcing Trend

KnowledgeStorm, the Internet's most highly trafficked business

technology search engine, today announced a new report from its partnership with The AlignIT Group. "Corporate IT Spending and Offshore Services" takes an industry-by-industry look at the practice of offshoring and examines trends in IT budgets for 2003 and 2004. In this report, you'll find out the profiles of which companies are most likely to go offshore, which ones will be most successful at doing so and which might be disappointed with the results.

    Key findings include:

    --  Large companies use offshore services 2.4 times more often
        than small companies and are more likely than small companies
        to use more offshore services in the future.

    --  Top users of offshore services, by industry:

        --  Communications (34.5% of these companies say they use
            offshore services)
        --  Information Technology (33.8%)
        --  Financial Services (25.7%)
        --  Retail-Wholesale (22.9%)

    --  "Health and Education" and "Public Administration" report that
        they're increasingly disinclined to use offshore services. In
        the case of Public Administration, i.e. Government, the
        disinclination to go offshore may reflect recent political
        backlash and significant dissatisfaction reported with past
        use of offshore services.

"Lou Dobbs, Carly Fiorina, Gregory Mankiw--whomever's side you're on, this special report sheds new light on the controversial issue of offshore services," said Kelly Gay, chairman, president & CEO of KnowledgeStorm. "In the midst of heated debate and rising backlash over this trend, quantitative facts and analysis are hard to come by. 'Corporate IT Spending and Offshore Services' reveals the trends, profiles and numbers behind outsourcing that may affect your job, your company and your customers."

NOTE TO EDITOR: http://KnowledgeStormResearch.com/

The full report on "Corporate IT Spending and Offshore Services" is available complimentary for credentialed members of the media. ($1,500 for non-press). In addition to more detailed data and charts, the full report includes complete segmentation analysis by industry and company size.

    More findings from the full report:

    --  23.6% of companies surveyed report using offshore services.

    --  Use of offshore services varies widely by industry, from a low
        of 9% to a high of over 34%.

    --  The marketplace is polarized -- not all companies are eager to
        use offshore services:

        --  42% of respondents indicate that they're less open to
            using offshore services in the future.
        --  57.8% of users of offshore services are satisfied with
            them.

    --  There's a strong positive correlation between satisfaction and
        increasing likelihood to use offshore services. Therefore,
        expect use of offshore services to continue to grow because of
        this base of satisfied and eager customers.

"Corporate IT Spending and Offshore Services" is part of a report series that examines thousands of customers' feedback on more than 80 enterprise software vendors. Markets covered include ERP, CRM, BPM, Business Intelligence, Portals, Performance and Availability Management, IDEs, Medical Records and Storage Management. Reports comprise vendor satisfaction rankings and customer buying behavior.

About The AlignIT Group

The AlignIT Group mission is to facilitate better and faster IT purchase decisions to help make buying IT solutions more efficient and effective. We concentrate on achieving the Best-Fit between corporate buyers' requirements and suppliers' offerings. AlignIT surveyed a qualified group of more than 2,000 enterprise software users from KnowledgeStorm's community. Reports combine survey data with in-depth analysis from AlignIT's experienced analysts. For an overview of the research reports offered and our newsletter please visit www.AlignITgroup.com.

About KnowledgeStorm

Founded in 1998, KnowledgeStorm is the Internet's most highly trafficked business technology search site and provides software, service, reseller and hardware information on thousands of IT solutions, alongside white papers, webinars and case studies. This information is available at KnowledgeStorm.com and through syndication partners including Yahoo!, The Wall Street Journal's StartupJournal.com, TechTarget, Aberdeen Group, InfoWorld, Fastcompany.com, Inc.com and DevX. More than 1.6 million visit KnowledgeStorm each month, and 80% of those visitors influence business technology purchase decisions, http://KnowledgeStormResearch.com.

KnowledgeStorm has partnered with The AlignIT Group, a respected independent market research firm, to deliver Market Research reports. AlignIT surveyed a select group of more than 2,000 enterprise software users and buyers from the KnowledgeStorm community about their first-hand experience with enterprise software. These reports combine this survey data with in-depth analysis from AlignIT's experienced researchers. http://KnowledgeStormResearch.com

KnowledgeStorm and the KnowledgeStorm logo are trademarks of KnowledgeStorm, Inc.