“More and more Indian companies are considering investment in the region,” says Rengaraj Viswanathan, India’s former ambassador to Venezuela, as well as a former Consul General of India to Sao Paulo, Brazil. “Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia are the destinations of choice for Indian investors.”

India is known around the world as a country with strong IT capabilities. While tech is a huge part of its interest in Latin America, India  has broad economic concerns that cover a number of industrial sectors, including manufacturing and resources. To advance its interests in Latin America requires an aggressive trade stance – something the government of India is pursuing.

“India sees Latin America’s potential in the long term,” says Viswanathan. “It already has PTAs (Preferential Trading Areas) with the Mercosur trade block and Chile. Now it needs PTAs or FTAs (Free Trade Agreements) with Mexico, Peru and Colombia, because its role at the moment is modest.”

Viswanathan says that at present India’s exports to these countries are at a disadvantage when compared to countries that already have agreements in place. That said, Indian companies have invested $12 billion in key sectors, and that number is sure to increase. A big part of that push will be in high technology.

Indian Tech Investment in LatAm

“At the regional level, we now have a presence in eight countries with about 10,000 employees,” Ankur Prakash, vice president of Latin American operations for Indian tech giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), recently told Mexico’s El Economista. “We want to be a company with between 20,000 and 22,000 employees in the region.”

In Mexico, TCS has 3,000 people working out of its global IT delivery service centers in Guadalajara and Queretaro – where it recently expanded – as well as in its offices in Mexico City. The company, which is the IT services division of the Indian industrial giant Tata, expects to see additional employees in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay. This investment in people delivers the potential for a long term deepening of cultural, political, and economic ties.

“The TCS center in Montevideo, Uruguay, provides training and internship for students from all over Latin America,” says Viswanathan. “In most cases, the country heads are local Latinos.”

Of course TCS isn’t the only big Indian company present in Latin America, but it does reflect a larger trend which is supported back on the subcontinent, where interest in Latin America is at an all-time high.

India vs. China

In the first decade of this century India did about $20 billion of trade with Latin America. This is now aided by new technologies supporting innovative trade platforms such as Mercatrade.com, a B2B site that matches buyers and suppliers active in Latin America. The push is on to make more progress. However, China is clearly the number-one competitor among emerging markets.

“India is still not as ambitious as China, nor is its scale comparable to China’s,” says Viswanathan. “China is bigger and faster. Then again, they are not constrained by democracy, diversity and human rights concerns.”

But these factors are strengths, too. Viswanathan says that India has a lot of synergies and complementary strengths with Latin America that differ from the advantages offered by China. Reduced tariffs and a push to build cultural ties are making a big difference. This is one reason why TCS is looking to grow its Latin America workforce by more than 100 percent in the next three years, building on its decades-long presence in the region.

“We do not intend to open any more offices,” TCS’s Prakash told El Economista. “Instead, we will be growing in the offices we already have.”

That means the Mexican cities of Guadalajara and Queretaro will remain a central part of TCS’s strategy in Latin America. It makes sense. Mexico is embracing technology, particularly in the financial and telecommunications sectors, with a burgeoning middle class and increasingly skilled workforce.

“Mexico has potential and advantages as part of NAFTA, which Indian companies can take advantage of,” says Viswanathan. “And, of course, Mexico has a rivalry with Brazil, and will be happy to be used by the USA.”

Two-way Investment

Latin America is increasing its interest in India, too, and it is coming from all over the region.

Mentor Villagómez, Ecuador’s new ambassador to India, has stated that a strategic relationship with India is a key objective of the South American country, and the Government of the Province of San Luis in Argentina recently announced that it had opened its first commercial, cultural and tourism office in the city of Chennai in southeast India. A large delegation with representation from 34 companies, as well as 21 officials – including mayors and ministers – traveled to India as part of the announcement.

“Many provinces in Latin America keep sending delegations to India,” says Viswanathan. “San Luis in particular is a province with a distinct mindset and vision; the delegation is going to Chennai because there are useful contacts there.”

The news from Argentina with regard to India is encouraging: little to no tariffs on 900 products (both countries have signed a Bilateral Investment Promotion Agreement, or “BIPA”), with Indian companies employing about 7,000 Argentines.

That said, the big players are still Mexico and Brazil, with plenty of room to grow.

“More and more companies are considering investment in the region,” says Viswanathan. “Brazil in particular is a strategic partner, with a common global agenda with India. So it needs to be given special treatment. For example, Mexico and Argentina are opposed to expansion of permanent membership of UN Security Council. But India and Brazil want to be in there.”

For India, the discovery of the Americas is happening anew, with foreign and economic policy necessarily reflecting the diversity of the region. Clearly, there will be more news coming out of Latin America as Indian companies see more opportunity, and as political and cultural ties deepen.

Timothy Wilson is a Canadian journalist based in Guadalajara, Mexico. He covers business and technology, as well as cultural and political news. Aside from Global Delivery Report, he freelances for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Globe & Mail, among other outlets. His blog, “La politica es la politica” covers breaking stories from Mexico and Central America. Follow him on Twitter @TimothyEWilson.

Compared to many of their global peers, execs from Mexico were more optimistic about general business conditions over the next year and among the most bullish about technology’s potential to impact business results. Their planned IT spending increases are also among the highest of the 10 countries surveyed.

All of the countries in the study report gaps between current IT skills and desired skills. Only 16 percent of respondents said they were “exactly where they want to be” in terms of IT skills. While 40 percent reported being “very close,” that leaves nearly half of respondents (44 percent) looking for significant improvements.

Thirty-nine percent of respondents plan to add IT staff in the next 12 months, up from the 24 percent who added staff in 2012. Nearly 60 percent report concerns over finding the desired quantity and quality of IT workers.

The percentage of respondents with concerns is a bit higher in Mexico, where 63 percent indicated worries over finding the right workers.

Mexican respondents are in the middle of the pack with their hiring plans. Forty-five percent of them intend to hire IT staff. At the top and bottom of the staffing scale are the Middle East, where 62 percent of respondents have hiring plans, and Japan, where only 15 percent of respondents will add staff.

A whopping 92 percent of Mexican executives said there were IT skills gaps at their companies, though 49 percent reported the skills gaps were small. Just 11 percent of the Mexican execs said they were “not that close” to the desired skill level.

For Mexican execs, the top three factors contributing to IT skills gaps are fast-changing technology, which makes it tough for workers to remain current with skills, cited by 42 percent of respondents; IT education that does not sufficiently translate to real-world performance (39 percent); and a lack of resources for IT skill development (38 percent).

The top five IT skills for Mexican companies in the next 12 months are IT security, network infrastructure, data storage/back-up, Web/e-commerce and data analytics/business intelligence.

The CompTIA surveyed IT and business executives in nine countries and one region (Middle East) in order to collect and share data about global technology adoption and workforce trends.

According to the International Technology Adoption and Workforce Issues study, 72 percent of Mexican executives believe business conditions will improve in the next 12 months. That makes Mexico the third most optimistic country, trailing Brazil (85 percent) and India (81 percent).

Not surprisingly, given their still-slumping economies, the least positive forecasts came from France, where just 26 percent of execs think business conditions will improve, followed by Japan (34 percent), the UK (37 percent) and Germany (40 percent).

Tech’s Impact on Business

Eighty-nine percent of Mexican execs linked technology to business success. This made them among the most positive respondents about technology’s impact. The Middle East was the only area with higher scores in this category.

And 93 percent of Mexican executives intend to increase IT spending in the next 12 months. Again, this puts Mexico near the head of the pack, behind only Brazil and India — both with 97 percent of execs predicting increases.  Mexico also nearly topped the charts on projected spending increases. Respondents expect to grow IT budgets by 7.3 percent, trailing only India (7.6 percent).

Demonstrating softness in the economy, Japanese execs expect to increase IT spending just 1.8 percent in the next year. And the situation isn’t much better in Europe, where the UK (1.8 percent), France (2.3 percent) and Germany (4.3 percent) were more cautious on spending than their global peers.

These results mesh with Gartner’s findings, which we wrote about in March, that countries with immature IT markets will outspend their counterparts in more mature markets. For example, Gartner found that 69 percent of organizations in emerging regions expect bigger budgets for new software licenses in 2014, compared with 47 percent from mature regions who said their budgets would grow.

As the study notes, CompTIA’s prediction for IT spending is similar to forecasts by IDC, which is calling for 5.7 spending growth, Forrester Research (5.4 percent) and Gartner (4.1 percent).

Room for Tech Improvement

In the not-so-positive category, just 6 percent of Mexican executives say they are “exactly where we want to be” in utilizing technology. The only lower scores came from Japan (2 percent) and France (5 percent). Overall, 15 percent of respondents said they were “exactly” where they wanted to be, and 43 percent said they were “very close.”

Ninety percent of Mexican execs did say they were “close to where we want to be” or “moderately close to where we want to be” in terms of tech utilization.

Among the countries where execs expressed the most confidence in their use of technology: India (35 percent) and Thailand (33 percent).

The three top technology priorities for Mexican businesses in the coming months: leverage IT to improve business operations, reach new customers and improve staff productivity.

“I have never met an Indian professional who has a story about how he was cheated in Mexico, let alone kidnap and murder,” said Rupesh Sinha, a TCS employee in Guadalajara, Mexico’s so-called Silicon City.

According to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, about 2,000 Indians were living in Mexico as of March 2011. TCS, which employs nearly 200 Indians at its facility in Guadalajara alone, is the country’s largest employer of Indians.

“People feel frightened to go out of their homes after 7 p.m. in New Delhi and in many U.S. cities. Mexico is far safer,” said Anurag Kumar, chairman of ITexco, a software firm in Guadalajara. Kumar is a native of India’s state of Punjab.

Most Violence Linked to Drugs

“Murder takes place in every country and every city, wherever there are humans. I think some U.S. cities are more violent than the Mexican cities,” said Kumar, whose family lives in the U.S. city of Austin, Texas.

Drug violence has claimed thousands of lives in Mexico over the past decade, but Kumar said violence takes place mostly in border areas, away from the towns where IT professionals are working. Hitesh Chaturvedi, another IT professional from India, echoed Kumar’s opinion.

“Violence takes place in the areas bordering the United States.  We are living far away from the northern border,” Chaturvedi said.

Drug gangs fight with each other; therefore, most victims of violence are members of the gangs.

“Some time gangs kidnap wealthy citizens for ransom. But I am not a billionaire, so there is no point in kidnapping me,” Chaturvedi said.

Some Indians, Sinha said, do not venture into unfamiliar areas. “Guadalajara is a better and safer place than many Indian cities,” he said, recalling how rickshaw drivers fleeced him when he was working in the Indian Silicon Valley, Bangalore.

Indians’ Assimilation

Contrary to the belief of many residents in their homeland, Indian IT professionals in Mexico travel on public buses, watch movies in public theaters and shop in malls as freely as every Mexican does.

“Mexico has got a great culture, warm people and extremely beautiful places. Also a lot of problems, but just like any other country has,” Chaturvedi said.

For Indians working in Mexico, there are many Hindu temples, Gurudwaras (place of worship for Sikhs) and mosques to visit.

“I often go to the temple with my wife and children,” said Chaturvedi, who came to Mexico eight years ago from India’s Northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

“We celebrate almost every Indian festival, including Diwali and Holi, inviting our Mexican friends so that they can catch a glimpse of our tradition and belief,” said Sinha, who is a native of India’s Bihar state.

Many Indians have started learning Spanish and are increasingly mingling with Mexicans, with a hope of settling down in Mexico forever.

Some of the Indians have married Mexican women and are living happily, according to Chaturvedi. Those who entered the Latin American country a decade ago have already learnt Spanish and quickly adapted to their foreign environment.

Indians have also built several cultural associations. In Guadalajara, for instance, there is an organization called Descendants of India, which often organizes Indian cultural programs.

“We go to beaches during weekends and visit good restaurants in the city. Some time, we visit the parties hosted by Mexican friends,” Chaturvedi said.

Mexicans get along well with Indians because “we have similar skin color,” he added.

Kumar said Mexicans like Indians because of their technical know-how. “Mexico wants to develop Guadalajara on the models of Bangalore, India’s Silicon Valley,” he pointed out.

As the nearshoring concept takes hold, he said, more and more Indian technology companies may move into Mexico with their armies of software professionals. “TCS, Infosys, Hexaware… all have set up shop here. More companies will come here in the days ahead.”

If the U.S. government continues to refuse visas to foreign IT workers, setting up offices in Mexico will be a viable option for Indian outsourcing companies to retain their U.S. clients. Mexico’s trade agreements with the U.S., and its proximity with the world’s biggest economy, make it an ideal choice for global outsourcers.

In my first two pieces, I addressed step one, Strategizing Innovation , and step two, Creating Metrics, in more detail. Step three, Assessing a Partner’s Innovative Capabilities, discussed the key elements that are necessary in order to identify a vendor’s ability to consistently provide innovation.

This article will discuss the key elements of contractual agreements to ensure consistent innovation, step four.

From a contractual perspective, business process outsourcing (BPO) service providers do not require incentives to develop innovations to improve their own revenue or operating margins. However, they do require specific incentives in order to focus on client performance. Therefore, it is imperative that clients and BPO service providers identify and quantify several metrics such as the following in formal contractual agreements:

1. Mandatory productivity, quality and innovation targets.
2.  Specific definition (s) as to the number of required innovation days per quarter. An outline of activities is preferable.
3. Development, management, delivery and refinement of quarterly innovation forums. Again, this includes the specific activities to take place during these sessions.
4. The partner’s strategic and tactical approach to incremental and radical innovation. This should include a brief innovation plan.
5. Gainsharing at the project level.
6. Clear statement that the provider knows that they “don’t have a lock on the business.”
7. Introduction of special governance provisions, such as the development of committees dedicated specifically to innovation.

Unfortunately, many BPO relationships are still priced based on cost reduction and resource inputs, such as the number of full-time equivalent employees (FTE) required to perform the services. Although many companies like the simplicity and predictability of FTE pricing, they also recognize that input-based pricing can discourage service providers from innovating out of fear that it will mean significantly reduced revenues.

To overcome this dis-incentive, clients should consider introducing provisions that require service providers to improve productivity by 4 percent to 5 percent per year. Both clients and providers have endorsed this approach.

In addition, many clients and BPO providers are developing business cases and supportive legal documents for each innovation project. This includes agreeing in advance how financial compensation would be awarded to the provider.

As previously mentioned, continuous improvement and innovation are typically included within a clause in the contractual agreement. It requires the BPO service provider to bring forward three to five ideas each year to improve services and technology or save money.

Because these ideas may cause a reduction of the fee to the service provider, these clauses should be supported by gainshare clauses.  If there is significant reduction of fees, then a structured program will allow the service provider to also reap some of the financial benefit for a period of time after the idea is implemented.

The challenge with innovation in contracts is that the achievement of the objectives involves both the service provider and the client. Many engagements have such clauses in the agreements, which have never been executed or even thought about by either party.

Continuous improvement and innovation are creative conditions; ideas do not simply materialize out of thin air in the course of service delivery. Every client situation is unique, and potential innovations must be proposed in the context of the situation.

Clients should create a specific focus on innovation in their governance process. This requires that an innovation structure is created and time is set aside for both teams to think about potential ideas, review industry conditions, take input from the service provider’s experience in other engagements and best practices, and come up with proposals that the leadership teams can evaluate.

Marc Kauffmann is the president of The Kauffmann Group, LLC, a management consultancy featured in New York Times best-selling author Seth Godin’s book, “Bull Market: Companies That Make Things Happen.” He has 25-plus years of expertise in the evolution of innovative business practices, market approaches, product/service offerings and information technology. You can follow him on Twitter @Marc81753262 or find him on LinkedIn.

If you are only spending a few days and cannot do all there is to do in Punta del Este, here are some tips to help you prioritize.

Brava or Mansa?

Punta del Este has two main beaches, one over the Río de la Plata and the other over the Atlantic Ocean. Those preferring calmer waters, such as families with young children, will enjoy the Mansa beaches along the Claudio Williman promenade. Surf enthusiasts and others looking for rougher waves will most likely prefer the Brava beach and its waters that stretch along the Lorenzo Batlle promenade.

Film Festival or Fashion Show?

Film festivals in Montevideo date back to 1951, when Argentinean entrepreneur Mauricio Litman organized the first edition of the Punta del Este International Film Festival at the Cantegril Country Club. Stars like Joan Fontaine, Gèrard Philipe and Silvana Mangano attended the event where films by Robert Bresson, Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman were shown. After a long pause, the festival was reborn a few years ago. It now takes place every year near the end of the summer season, around March.

For those who prefer catwalks and couture to cinema, Punta del Este offers annual fashion shows. Argentinean designers and their Uruguayan counterparts organize outstanding shows, with the most prominent the one held at the Conrad Hotel every January.

Celebrities such as Shakira, Zinedine Zidane and Pierre Casiraghi, Prince of Monaco regularly attend shows to see the work of designers like Jorge Ibáñez, Claudio Cosano (Argentina), Karin Coo (Chile), Hernán Zajar (Colombia) or locals Pablo Suárez, Nicolás Osano and Charlotte (Uruguay).

Casapueblo or La Mano?

This question has to do with which spot to choose to best commemorate your stay in Punta del Este. Most tourists choose the monument for the drowned created by Chilean artist Mario Irarrazábal to take a photograph that proves they have spent some time in the most elegant seaside resort in Latin America. The giant sculpture of a hand with fingers emerging from the sand is arguably the most well-known landmark of Punta del Este.

Others choose the famous sunsets at Casapueblo to record their visit. Built by noted Uruguayan artist Carlos Páez Vilaró, the house is a Mediterranean-style citadel sculpture that pays tribute to the artist’s son, one of the 16 survivors of the crash of Flight 571 in 1972. It includes a museum, an art gallery and a hotel.

Seafood or Farm Fare?

Twelve miles from downtown Punta del Este, visitors can enjoy free tours to Tambo El Sosiego, where the famous La Pataia Dulce de Leche is made. The tours show visitors the process of making the favorite dessert in the region. Every summer since 1996, the dairy farm also hosts an International Jazz Festival with artists from around the world playing their melodies surrounded by hills and nature. The farm is an excellent choice for those who enjoy nature, families and music.

However, the most popular gastronomic choice is, by far, the fresh seafood that many restaurants along the Punta del Este harbor offer to those visiting the yachting facility with its breathtaking views of the nearby Gorriti Island.

Gorriti or Lobos?

There are two small islands a few minutes away from the coast, and visitors who want to see them can take short boat rides that leave every day from the port. The tour to Isla de Lobos takes about two hours and offers tourists a glimpse of the largest seal colony in South America. Visitors choosing Isla Gorriti, an island half the size of Isla de Lobos that was home to a prison in the 18th century, can enjoy long, relaxing strolls and a meal at the small restaurant that faces one of the island’s two beaches.The beach is a preferred spot for water sports enthusiasts and is surrounded by thousands of pine trees.

Casting or Clubs?

While it is a fact that Punta del Este is all about sun and beaches, it is also true that the city has a very active nightlife. Bars, lounges and clubs receive thousands of tourists around midnight. La Barra, with its famous undulating bridge and its many clubs, has attracted stars such as Michael Bublè and Naomi Campbell, as well as many other visitors who look to spend a lively night after a relaxing day at the beach.

During the day, the Maldonado Stream is the preferred spot for those looking to cast a line and enjoy a day of saltwater fishing. Fishing enthusiasts can rent a boat or fish off the dock and cast their lines for tuna, anchovies and bluefish.

Those with lots of energy can fish during the day and hit the clubs at night!

Pat Antuña Yarza is a freelance writer and translator based in Montevideo. Mom to three and a relentless juggler, she writes copy for digital agencies and creative studios as well as news and culture magazines. With an MA in Cinema & TV Production and 10-plus years’ experience in translation and advertising, she also runs a team of 30 audiovisual translators and blogs on media & subtitling at www.widdmedia.com. She loves films, advertising, music and parenting. You can follow Pat on Twitter @datcopypat.

In a later blog post, I noted the low high school graduation rates in some American cities and said those rates could make it tough to fill the kinds of jobs that fall somewhere between high-paying, technical positions like those found at Microsoft and minimum-wage work at places like McDonald’s.

The U.S. could learn something from Latin American countries that are fast-tracking the training of young adults for jobs that will improve their lives while boosting the numbers of potential employees for services firms.

Mike Barrett, the CEO of software development company Unosquare, during a presentation at last month’s Nearshore Nexus event spoke about the role services companies like his can play in providing good jobs for workers in Latin America. He also encouraged outsourcing clients to do their part by making sure their suppliers treat their employees well.

How LatAm Does It

A growing number of companies like Unosquare are creating corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs that focus on equipping young people with sought-after technical skills.

Services company Globant just received the Foundations for the Future Award from the Nearshore Executive Alliance for its TesteAR program that has trained some 150 Argentinean youths to be software testers. More than 85 percent of the trainees have found employment, said Francisco J. Michref, Globant’s CSR Coordinator.

“The goal of TesteAR is to rescue vulnerable young adults, who neither work nor study. We have also extended a helping hand for the students to land a right job in a right company,” Michref said.

Participants are schooled in computer basics and the English language, in addition to software testing. They receive $150 in monthly scholarship and travel expenses during the training.

Globant funded the program out of its own pocket for two years, though municipal authorities now contribute 50 percent of the training costs.

Victoria Prussen Spears, co-founder and CEO of Global Outsourcing Information, spotlighted several successful training efforts, many of which feature cooperation between government agencies, universities and private companies, in an article that appeared in a recent Nearshore Executive Alliance newsletter. In Mexico, for instance, a nonprofit called MexicoFirst has spent $40 million to certify 40,000 Mexicans in hot programming languages such as Java and .NET.

Some countries make the mistake of focusing on upgrading technical infrastructure before building workforces, Spears pointed out. “Without a trained workforce, businesses will not come, no matter how impressive the infrastructure or how generous the financial incentives,” she wrote.

In late 2012, David Tapper, VP of Outsourcing and Offshore Services Market Research for IDC, said outsourcing is in the first phase of what he called “a fundamental shift toward cloud.”

Last week, during a wide-ranging discussion in which IDC examined the previous four quarters of deal signings, Tapper gave clearer guidance of how that shift may affect the buying patterns of outsourcing customers.

Not just cloud, but mobile technologies and virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI) are beginning to make a noticeable impact on the services market, said Tapper. A decline in commercial outsourcing and corresponding growth in public sector outsourcing over the last few quarters is due, in part, to the fact that government lags the private sector in adopting new technologies, he said.

In every layer of the enterprise technology stack, services are becoming automated and/or maintenance-free, said Tapper, noting the popularity of data center hosting and “disposable” mobile devices which essentially require no maintenance. This trend is being seen most clearly in the data center. IDC is predicting an annual growth rate of 2 percent for data center outsourcing for the next five years. In the U.S., the firm expects the rate to actually decline for the next few years, Tapper said.

The public sector is simply slower to adopt these transformative technologies than the private sector and thus continues to rely more heavily on traditional outsourcing, Tapper said.

More Comfortable with Cloud

Tapper also pointed to a set of statistics that he said showed outsourcing buyers are becoming increasingly comfortable working with pure cloud providers such as Amazon. In 2010 when IDC asked whether enterprises wanted to buy discrete cloud services or bundled cloud services, just 22 percent selected the discrete option. By the fourth quarter of last year, however, that number had grown to 32 percent – and Tapper expects it to continue to grow.

Also last year, 70 percent of enterprises told IDC they purchased services from traditional providers while 30 percent said they used cloud services. But when companies were asked about their buying outlook in five years, IDC saw a 50/50 split.

One of the biggest deals signed in 2012 was Concur Technologies’ $1.4 billion, 15-year contract to provide cloud-based travel booking and expense management for the General Services Administration (GSA), Tapper pointed out. “That is the kind of new business model that is stepping toe-to-toe with traditional outsourcing,” he said.

The Cloud Shopping List

Despite this upheaval, Tapper said enterprise buying requirements will remain remarkably consistent. In fact, many of the requirements upon which companies base their outsourcing decisions will become essential in the cloud era. He listed seven requirements:

Providing best-in-class capabilities across all services. While important now, Tapper said this will become even more so as cloud services become more integrated and services become dependent on the quality of related services. “Services will have to work all the time, and you’ve got to give me top-notch capability,” Tapper said.

Ensuring SLAs are met. Likewise, a proven record of delivering SLAs will become even more key in the cloud, especially in regard to uptime, Tapper said.

Full portfolio of offerings, with ability to deliver end-to-end capabilities across IT and business process services. This is one area that Tapper expects to change, as more companies adopt the cloud. Rather than a continued emphasis on single providers with end-to-end services, Tapper sees a bifurcation, with some providers offering IT infrastructure while others use that infrastructure to offer process-related services. As an example of what he meant, he mentioned Corefino, a provider of cloud accounting apps. “This won’t happen overnight,” he said. “It will be a long, evolutionary process.”

Industry knowledge. This requirement will also change moving forward, Tapper predicted. “We expect people to have it now. But in the future, it will become more embedded in the services.”

Financial stability. Expected now, this becomes even more crucial in the cloud model, particularly in the public cloud. “If you support hundreds of thousands of companies on a single service, you cannot fail,” Tapper said.

Global delivery. Many companies desire this now. It will become even more important in the cloud, as buyers will need to ensure their providers can provide the appropriate compliance and data portability guarantees.

Transformation. Two-thirds of U.S. outsourcing buyers want professional services such as integration and consulting included with their service offerings. While that will likely hold true in the early shift to the cloud, that need will fade as cloud delivery becomes more standardized, Tapper noted.

It was Republican candidate Mitt Romney, not eventual winner President Barack Obama, who brought up Latin America, saying the region offered a “huge opportunity” for the U.S. No Latin American countries earned a specific mention in the debate, just Romney’s more general statement about the region. The candidates mostly stuck to discussing the Middle East and China.

Presidential Priority

Latin America is definitely on Obama’s radar now, due in part perhaps to the growth in America’s Hispanic population and what many experts see as its importance as a voting bloc in U.S. elections. According to an Associated Press story, Hispanics will make up 26 percent of the American population in 2043, up from 17 percent today. As the story notes, many Hispanic immigrants maintain close ties to their home countries.

It may or may not have been politics that prompted Obama to make a whirlwind visit to Mexico last week, but it definitely landed the country in the headlines. While immigration and crime tend to dominate discussions of Mexico in the U.S., Obama put the focus squarely on business during his visit.

According to a Forbes story, Obama announced that Vice President Joe Biden will participate in regular, bi-national, high-level discussions designed to further strengthen economic ties between the two countries. He also met with prominent Mexican business executives, including Carlos Slim Domit, chairman of Grupo Carso and son of the world’s richest man. And he praised Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto for his efforts to pass legislation that will open up Mexico’s telecommunications market, a move that is widely seen as one of the most significant achievements of Pena Nieto’s first six months in office.

As a USA Today story noted, Obama spoke to an enthusiastic audience of Mexican students about the need for the U.S. to “recognize new realities, including the impressive progress in today’s Mexico.” He also mentioned that “some Americans only see the Mexico depicted in sensational headlines” and that attitudes toward Mexico can be “trapped in old stereotypes” about violence.

And misperceptions are found in Mexico, as well, Obama said, with some Mexicans thinking America wants to take over Mexico while others believe the U.S. ignores the country.

Misperceptions about Mexico

While Obama spoke of the need to correct such misperceptions, it may not be easy. A recent survey by the Chicago Council of Global Affairs found that favorable ratings of the country are at their lowest point since the council began asking about relations between the two countries in 2002. Mexico got a mean score of 43 on a scale of 0 to 100, down from a score of 60 in 2002.

When it comes to economic relations between the two countries, 64 percent of Americans see Mexico as an economic partner rather than an economic competitor. Yet many respondents underestimate the importance of Mexico as a trade partner. Just 20 percent were aware that Mexico is one of America’s top five trading partners. An encouraging 57 percent, however, believe the two countries are working in the same direction on trade and economic development.

More encouraging results: The number of Americans who believe the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has had a positive impact on the U.S. economy stands at 50 percent, up grom 42 percent in 2004. The number is even higher among respondents under age 45 and those with a college education.