As offshoring matures, outsourcing providers themselves are moving jobs around the globe in search of lower costs and better service.
The Bangalore outsourcer Wipro Ltd. now has two centers in China and others in Romania, Brazil, and Canada. Girish S. Paranjpe, the president of the company's financial solutions unit, said in an interview last week that in terms of operating costs, Canada is more expensive than developing nations but less expensive than the United States.
"What started as pure India offshoring is becoming global delivery in the purest sense," Mr. Paranjpe said. "As one of my clients put it, 'globalization is over.' "
The strategy is "not offshore per se, but where can work be done best, where it makes sense from a long-term perspective," he said.
His company's roots are as a software development outsourcer, but it also has significant business-process outsourcing operations such as call centers. The biggest revenue generator for the financial unit is transaction processing for clients.
Wipro also operates a dozen "proximity centers" around the world, with relatively small staffs to provide fast returns on specific projects for clients, including those in North America, Japan, and western Europe, Mr. Paranjpe said.
"As we become a global company, we need to have people of multiple nationalities," he said.
Fidelity National Information Services Inc. also is taking on a more international face.
The Jacksonville, Fla., banking technology and outsourcing provider announced last month that it had bought Second Foundation Inc., a Menlo Park, Calif., company with a major development center in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh.
Jeffrey S. Carbiener, an executive vice president and the chief financial officer at Fidelity National, said it also intends to take advantage of other emerging markets, such as Brazil, where it set up shop last year to take on work for Brazilian banks.
"The cost bases in some of these countries, as well as the quality of the employees you can get, match up very well with India. One of those countries is Brazil," Mr. Carbiener said.
Other American companies are picking up global business. Last week NCR Corp. announced that it had won a contract to manage a fleet of off-site automated teller machines in India on behalf of HSBC Holdings PLC.
"Running the ATM channel is not core to the banks' business in many instances," said Lorraine Russell, a spokeswoman for the Dayton, Ohio, ATM company. "That's our sweet spot, and we can do it."
Mr. Paranjpe said that as banks have pursued offshore strategies, many have shifted their focus from cost-cutting to boosting revenue.
Working with an outsourcer with locations around the globe, and support staff available anytime, can improve service, he said. "It's about revenue and growth for most of our clients, not about how can I cut 20% out of my budget."
Andreas Andreades, the chief executive of the Geneva core processing software maker Temenos Group AG, agreed that "the emphasis has shifted almost entirely to revenue generation" among global banking companies. "Cross-selling, single customer views are at the top of their agendas."
Last week Temenos announced a marketing agreement with Marshall & Ilsley Corp.'s Metavante Corp. of Milwaukee.
James R. Dempster, a senior vice president at Metavante and its chief technology officer, said demand is growing - especially among multinational corporate clients - for real-time financial information around the world.
"We're seeing the pain points in the big banks driven by customer needs, driven by global forces," Mr. Dempster said.
Madhavi Mantha, a senior analyst at the Boston research and consulting firm Celent LLC, said deals such as HSBC's show how diversification and specialization can benefit both banks and the vendors that serve them.
"Servicing is a big business" for NCR, Ms. Mantha said. "Entering new geographies where ATM use is on the rise is just smart business for them."
She also cited Capgemini Service SAS of Paris, which acquired Kanbay International Inc., a Rosemont, Ill., banking technology outsourcer with most of its operations in India, last month. Kanbay gets most of its income from two customers: HSBC and Morgan Stanley.
Global competitive pressure is likely to spark additional deals, Ms. Mantha said.
"We think there's going to be more of them," she said. "People are trying to build out a global delivery model."
