Houston: The worldwide market for offshore business process outsourcing (BPO) is projected to top $100 billion this year and there's more to come, says a report.

Outsourcing first started with manufacturing jobs but now even technology and high-level business jobs are following the outsourcing trend, according to eMarketer's latest report, 'Offshore Business Process Outsourcing'.

"It's the classic 'make versus buy' question," says Morris Cohen, professor of Manufacturing and Logistics at the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania.

According to Cohen, what has changed is that more companies are engaged in more outsourcing than before, and they are doing so in novel ways.

"The idea of moving things offshore and outside the boundary of the firm... more of that has been happening around processes you would never have thought possible," he says.

As quoted in the report, Gartner estimates that offshore BPO market will reach $131 billion this year, and that represents nearly an 8 per cent increase over the $121 billion figure for 2003.

Gartner's analysts say that so far the majority of offshore BPO is centred on contact centres and the remainder is mainly for back-office transaction processing services.