Outsourcing Makes It a Small World After All by Dan Muse (SmallBusinessComputing, June 11, 2004) is primarily about how small firms can easily jump into the outsourcing craze using an online resource to identify contractors, who may be anywhere in the world.

Beerud Sheth, vice president, Business Development at Elance.com, 'estimates there are 400,000 small- to mid-size Web and IT services firms in the U.S. alone.' Elance.com's firms tend to charge 40 to 80 percent of what traditional firms would cost, since many of them are small businesses or freelancers with very low overhead. 'Many of those businesses may have resulted from jobs being sent overseas. "They flipped the trend and made it an opportunity," said Sheth, adding who also sees a trend which he calls "reverse outsourcing." 'That is, international companies are outsourcing their IT functions to small U.S.-based businesses.'

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