India's $47-bn IT outsourcing industry , struggling to cut costs without compromising on seat capacity, is now reinventing the wheel. Some of them have tied up with telecom companies for outsourcing their own communications infrastructure, a model now known as “hosting services”.

Typically, BPOs will have to incur a significant cost upfront in procuring technical requirements that would help connect its centre in Gurgaon or Mumbai to clients across the world. Among these include an automated call distribution system, dialers, dialer licence and customer relationship management software.

Now telcos, such as Verizon, Qwest and Genesys, are tapping them with these “onpremise” services, easing the burden on BPOs in both installation of these technologies, and more importantly, their maintenance. According to Shrikant Parab, director for global BPO operations at CDC Global Services , a US-based company with call centres in Mumbai and Pune, the hosting services model helps a typical call centre with 25-100 seats in saving Rs 35-40 lakh. “For any start-up , it is a boon to save such an amount,” he said.