Although this has arguably little or no direct relevance to the UK market, I think there is a lesson to be learned (should lessons still be needed) about 'Trojan horses'.
Ordina used to fly high as the 'local hero' in the Dutch IT services market. However, its prior CEO refused to see the writing on the wall about the need for offshore capability until 2006, when key client, Rabobank, insisted on an element of offshore delivery before it would outsource some of its application development work to Ordina. With little or no low-cost resource itself, Ordina partnered with Cognizant, then the fastest growing of the India-centric players (see here).
Roll forward to December 2012 and, surprise, surprise, Rabobank is now perfectly comfortable dealing direct with Cognizant, awarding it a 5-year contract for application development, maintenance, and testing services. Ordina managed to cling on to some of Rabobank's 'onshore' business.
As a result, when Ordina announced its Q1 results, revenues were over €5m light from the loss of the offshore contract alone. This was only part of the reason behind the 9% headline revenue fall (to €94m), the other component of which management put down to the two fewer working days in the quarter. Such are the perils of a business model highly geared to time-and-materials services.
The 'balance of power' between the India-based IT services firms and the global and European IT majors is shifting, though this is as much because the India-based majors have achieved critical mass and cannot grow as quickly as they used to, as that the other players have since developed formidable global delivery networks themselves (well, some of them anyway).
Ordina will surely find it very hard to close the stable door now that this Trojan horse has bolted.