This week has been a turbulent one for the press. The ever increasing reality of the demise of print media is insurmountable. Last week News International’s the London Paper went to the newsroom in the sky after an epic battle with the London Lite. This week the UK’s Evening Standard announced it will be a free newspaper later this month, after more than 180 years as a paid-for title. The Standard has denied that there will be any immediate redundancies, although it will lose millions of pounds of revenue annually from the decision to drop the 50p cover price. It certainly doesn’t look good for us old journalists.

However, the Round-Up can’t sit in on a Friday afternoon moping when there is so much exiting sourcing news floating around. As long as the industry is booming, I am still in a job!

Before we look at all of the lucrative deals that have been signed, we must first look at the two interesting studies that have been released this week and are extremely pertinent to the sourcing sphere. The first is from Firstsource, who revealed the positive news that 55 percent of telecos will increase outsourcing in the next 12 months.

Cutting costs is the main driver according to the research of 85 leading telecoms companies across the world. The research showed that the recession has led to more than half of telecoms companies reporting lower customer spend, and over a quarter of telcos said that they have witnessed a rise in customers delaying payment of their bills. No wonder companies are turning to outsourcing.

On the other hand the second study, from Gartner, is a little less positive. It warns that one-quarter of top BPO providers will not exist in 2012. Apparently this due to a change in the BPO provider landscape which is as a direct result of market exit, acquisitions, and the ascent of new vendors.

Gartner has identified six key signposts to watch for that might herald the predicted market shakeout. Readers will be happy to know that a summary of which can be found in the news section of sourcingfocus.com.

Apart from the two studies there has been a plethora of ITO contracts that have been announced. These include Telfort signing with EDS; Nissan North America with CSC; and Her Majesty’s Treasury signs a contract with Fujitsu. Phew, that is a mouthful. So actually there is not a lot to moan about this week. As long as business is sailing high, so too are my spirits!