There's always room for predictions especially in the case of outsourcing. The year 2006 have showed a different face in outsourcing because the once favored "mega-deals" are now diminishing in favor of multi-sourcing.

The article entitled Guest Column: Global Outsourcing Trends in 2007 mentioned several predictions for outsourcing in the year 2007. Some of these predictions include the following:

-A continued trend towards smaller, shorter deals as clients focus on individual processes instead of large, complex institutional transactions
-Increased reliance on global service delivery models
-Importance of Data privacy and data security issues for outsourcing client
-Increased number of offshoring to Asia especially in China
-The outcome of the 2006 U.S. midterm elections could lead to the strengthening of anti-outsourcing
-Large Japanese companies will start to adopt recognizable elements of IT outsourcing and BPO models into their traditional contract partnering modes of operation

In the next few months, I believe that some of these predictions would come true thus showing the different changes in the outsourcing industry. As for knowing if these changes would be for the betterment of outsourcing, we just have to wait and see.