I made it to Toronto late this afternoon from my home base in California. First impression: BIG AIRPORT – BIG CITY. If it weren’t for the ESSO gas stations along the way (and the Canadian license plates), I would have thought I were in Dallas on the route between the airport and downtown, with the area's flat lands, green patches, and mushroom sprouts of tall buildings dotting the landscape.
We’re spending the night in the Fairmont Royal York, an 11-story, aged and elegant behemoth across from Union Station and within an easy walk of the waterfront, the sports arena, the club side of town, and dozens and dozens of anonymous office towers.
The Ontario government brought together the analysts and others invited to this confab with vendors who have offices in the region and economic development planners looking to bring more vendors to the area. I chatted with reps from IBM, Keane, Patni, Wipro and Aithent over glasses of “Ontario wine” (the white was quite tasty) and wasabi-caviar-sprinkled new potatoes (incredible!).
Tonight, I learned that the “GTA” — greater Toronto area — is number three in size for high tech in North America, after Silicon Valley and Boston. Mississauga, Ontario alone has 5,000 IT companies (albeit many of those are one or two person operations). I also learned that as a nearshore alternative, Canadian companies offer a 20% savings over the US in their service offerings. (I presume the details of that will be fed to us over the next couple of days.)
Tomorrow, we get the sales pitches from some of the leading vendors in the region: Keane, Hexaware, Wipro and Tata. Although I’m not familiar with Hexaware, I see a pattern here among the others. They have considerable presences in India. This part of Canada apparently has a bright future as a base of operations closer to North American clients.
Aside from seeing some outsourcing operations in person, I’m interested in hearing more about how the Canadian government attracts companies to the area via various incentives and what’s happening on the Canadian immigration front. Also, friend Karen suggested an intriguing line of questioning: What kind of outsourcing is taking place among Canadian companies and where is that work going?
