It’s the beginning of another year. I thought I would kick-off this year’s Inside Outsourcing blog posts with some predictions for 2011.

This comes from Burnt Oak Partners’ Jean Louis Bravard. He is a director at the sourcing broker and a former global executive at EDS.

It makes interesting reading and I would like to open the floor to all readers. Please send me your predictions for this year and I will blog about them.

Top Ten Outsourcing Predictions 2011

by Jean-Louis Bravard of Burnt Oak Partners

1. One of the Top 5 Indian pure plays will make a significant acquisition of a European player. Further service provider consolidation will occur – likely candidates being CapGemini, Vertex and Tieto
2. Mega deals will rebound as clients understand that multi-sourcing takes too much effort, time and requires too many advisers. Advisors will be under pressure to be held accountable for their advice, predictable risks and speed of the transaction
3. European governments will reluctantly copy the UK and actively outsource
4. UK central government and local councils will demand that service providers buy equity in new shared service centres to ensure “best efforts” and commitment. India providers will be most flexible and therefore successful
5. The “Cloud” will not produce much rain as clients struggle to virtualize processes and swim in poor data. New legislation around data “track and trace” will cause rethinking of Cloud strategies and supplier offerings
6. Datacenters are in fashion again!
7. Data security will become the new “trick” used by governments and regulators to prevent cross border data processing
8. Improved computer systems and data mobility will increasingly lead to call center jobs coming back from India and other low cost centers
9. Chinese IT will begin to be respected as a serious provider of hardware and software
10. Litigation on IP breaches and data ownership will flare as many recognize that they should have read fine print in 2010