-- Asia/Pacific: Australia, China, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam

-- Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA): the Czech Republic, Egypt, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain and Ukraine

Although only seven countries from the Americas appeared in the final list of 30, these countries are becoming an attractive proposition for the largest buying market for offshore services -- the US. Only Canada was rated "excellent" for language (with fluent English and French) but Latin American countries are able to leverage their Spanish-language skills increasingly in the US as more organisations now require Spanish language from their providers for communication with parts of their workforce that speak Spanish as a first language.

The key evaluation criterion of cost was where Canada fared the worst ("fair") compared with "good" or "very good" ratings for all other countries in the region. However, Canada again led the rating for political and economic environment, cultural compatibility, global and legal maturity, and data and intellectual property security and privacy. Argentina was rated less favourably than the rest for its political and economic environment. Brazil and Mexico were considered "very good" for cultural compatibility, and the Latin American countries all managed a solid "good" rating for global and legal maturity. As observed in other regions, data and intellectual property security and privacy remain "work in progress" for many developing countries.

Ten countries from Asia/Pacific were represented in the 30 leading countries. These included the undisputed leader in offshore services -- India -- and the greatest challenger in terms of potential scale -- China. The rest are a mix of mature environments that offer limited cost benefits (such as Australia, New Zealand and Singapore) and emerging countries with a variety of challenges, but attractive costs (such as Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam).