THE STRUCTURE OF COMPETITION IN THE INTERNATIONAL IT OUTSOURCING MARKET

Introduction. Globalization has significantly impacted the world economy, creating opportunities and challenges for business leaders. IT outsourcing, especially global IT outsourcing, involves delegating IT functions to other service providers in cost-effective and geographically attractive locations, but with different cultural conditions. Global IT outsourcing requires companies to make realistic proposals to customer companies, address challenges carefully, and understand limitations and risks for their strategic management decisions. These decisions should be based on an understanding of the current competitive structure in the IT outsourcing market among other international IT outsourcing companies. Purpose. To investigate the competition features in the IT outsourcing market based on the top 10 leading IT outsourcing companies in the world and highlight the competition structure using the example of these top international outsourcing companies. Materials and methods. The research materials include works of domestic and foreign authors conducting scientific and practical research in strategic management, global IT outsourcing, and its impact on customer companies' productivity. It also involves statistical analysis of the financial statements of the international IT outsourcing companies in terms of revenue generation from the sale of IT outsourcing services. Additionally, a calculated statistical parameter, the standard deviation of sales revenues, is used to describe the competition structure in the international IT outsourcing market using the example of the top 10 IT outsourcing companies. The research utilized scientific methods such as theoretical generalization and grouping, formalization, analysis and synthesis, and logical generalization to examine the characteristics of IT outsourcing companies within the top 10 list and formulate conclusions based on the distribution into clusters. Results. The analysis identified three clusters as the foundation of the structure of the IT outsourcing services market, based on the average revenue of the top 10 IT outsourcing companies. Each company adopts different strategies for increasing revenue from service sales. The first cluster focuses on risk minimization, the second ignores risk, and the third follows a classical approach where sales revenue and standard deviation are directly related. These findings can assist competitors in developing their strategies for competing in the IT outsourcing market. Discussion. The potential strategies suggest that an IT outsourcing company can enhance its competitive ability in the market by exploring specific strategies within these clusters.