Over the past two decades, Global Business Services (GBS) centers have evolved from cost-focused delivery hubs to integral strategic partners transforming enterprises. The GBS model today plays a pivotal role in enabling agility, scalability, and innovation across industries. The ongoing shift toward digitalization, coupled with macroeconomic uncertainties and talent-market realignment, has accelerated enterprises’ reliance on GBS centers to deliver higher-value outcomes. The GBS Data Book 2025 provides a comprehensive, data-driven view of theGBS landscape based on Everest Group’s proprietary GBS database, covering more than 5,800+ offshore/nearshore centers. This edition captures the latest trends shaping the GBS ecosystem, including the scale, scope, and maturity of GBS centers across industries, functions, and geographies. It analyzes center setup activity from 2021 through Q1 2025, spotlighting shifts in adoption patterns, delivery portfolios, digital maturity, and emerging locations. While the forthcoming GBS State of the Market report will contextualize these findings through strategic narratives and implications, the GBS Data Book 2025 serves as a companion data compendium, providing quantitative insights and factual benchmarks to support market sizing, strategy formulation, and investment decisions.

The Life and Annuity (L&A) insurance market is fundamentally shifting in sourcing approaches, moving beyond legacy cost-saving models to prioritize agility, innovation, and resilience. This report examines how macroeconomic uncertainties, talent shortages, and evolving customer expectations are prompting insurers to modernize core systems, adopt cloud-based platforms, and expand digital capabilities. The rise of generative AI, regulatory demands, and the need for scalable digital operations are key drivers influencing sourcing decisions. Insurers are embracing strategic models such as cloud XaaS, global capability centers (GCCs), and co-sourcing to meet organization goals while retaining control and accelerating innovation. The report outlines sourcing best practices across IT applications, infrastructure, platform services, and consulting, while also highlighting geographic delivery models, talent hubs, and supplier engagement strategies. With a focus on modular architectures, outcome-based KPIs, and embedded AI capabilities, the study provides a roadmap for insurers and providers to build future-ready sourcing ecosystems.

Global Business Services (GBS) models are rapidly evolving from cost-focused constructs into value-driven enterprise transformation engines. As the demand for digitalization and innovation intensifies, Finance and Accounting (F&A) services delivered through GBS are becoming increasingly strategic. This report explores how GBS centers deliver both transactional and judgment-intensive F&A activities across global locations, with a focus on process maturity, sourcing models, and enterprise priorities. It also examines the penetration of GBS in delivering core subprocesses such as procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, and record-to-report. Organizations are deepening their investment in intelligent automation, AI, and predictive analytics to modernize F&A operations, reduce manual effort, and enhance compliance. The report highlights key technologies being adopted, emerging use cases across subprocesses, and the characteristics of future-ready GBS organizations. It includes a case example demonstrating how one enterprise transformed its India-based GBS into a global finance hub, delivering significant efficiency gains, compliance improvements, and business impact.

India remains the most extensively leveraged location globally for delivering a wide range of services. Its vast and diverse talent pool, strong cost competitiveness, and supportive operating business environment drive this leadership. The country continues to serve as a strategic offshore partner for major markets, including the US, the UK, and Europe, enabled by a talent ecosystem aligned to follow-the-sun delivery models. Beyond transactional work, India is increasingly delivering complex services, with engineering research and development, product engineering, and digital services including AI, ML, and cybersecurity, emerging as key growth areas. Tier-1 locations, including Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Pune, account for ~80% of the overall services market in India. However, owing to increasing cost and margin pressures, rising attrition levels, and intensifying competition, organizations are actively exploring tier-2 and tier-3 cities. This shift is enabling them to access an untapped talent pool at lower attrition levels and operating costs, while also mitigating concentration risks in tier-1 cities. This report will support market providers in their quest to support the right service from the right location within India. It highlights the relative attractiveness and value proposition of key tier-1/2/3 cities for supporting services delivery, based on a multi-faceted assessment.

Technology services have emerged as the backbone of modern enterprises and providers, powering customer engagement, operational agility, and competitive differentiation. As organizations fast-track their digital transformation journeys, the rapid adoption of technologies such as AI, generative AI, ML, blockchain, cybersecurity, and AR/VR continues to reshape industries across the board. The demand for technology-led R&D and innovation is rising sharply, with enterprises, global capability centers, and providers increasingly embedding digital capabilities into their service delivery models. In this fast-evolving landscape, organizations must proactively scale digital solutions to stay ahead of market disruptions and meet growing customer expectations. To remain competitive and future-ready, businesses will need to revisit and refine their location strategies, building delivery portfolios that align with their digital transformation goals. This Everest Group handbook is designed to support organizations in identifying the right global locations to deliver technology services. It presents a comprehensive and multi-dimensional analysis of the relative attractiveness of leading delivery destinations worldwide. At an overall level, this handbook covers the technology services delivery attractiveness on three broad dimensions: • Talent pulse: an assessment of market maturity, entry, and experienced talent-related attributes for technology services • Financial attractiveness: an assessment of the financial attractiveness of locations from an operating cost perspective for delivery of technology services • Enablers: an assessment of enabling drivers, such as infrastructure and digital readiness, essential for technology services delivery

Everest Group’s Location Spotlight reports provide a crisp, insightful assessment of established and emerging/next-wave global services delivery locations by country and city. The reports help global sourcing practitioners or location strategy professionals stay ahead of the competition in understanding key market dynamics and the related opportunities each location presents.

Everest Group’s Location Spotlight reports provide a crisp, insightful assessment of established and emerging/next-wave global services delivery locations by country and city. The reports help global sourcing practitioners or location strategy professionals stay ahead of the competition in understanding key market dynamics and the related opportunities each location presents.

In July 2025, the US Senate introduced the bipartisan Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025 bill. Although still pending, the bill signals a potentially significant policy shift designed to limit the offshoring of US call center jobs. The legislation would apply to any company operating call centers with 50 or more employees, linking access to federal benefits with maintaining domestic operations. It would also mandate greater transparency when customer service work is delivered from offshore locations. If enacted, the Act could reshape global delivery strategies for customer experience services by raising the cost of offshoring and introducing new compliance burdens for US-based enterprises. Global services firms with sizable offshore delivery portfolios – particularly in India, the Philippines, and nearshore hubs – may face business continuity risks, client scrutiny, and contract renegotiations. Conversely, the legislation could stimulate greater onshore investment in the US, altering the global services delivery mix. This Risk Radar analyzes the legislative context, potential business implications, and considerations for global services firms as they monitor developments around this bill.

As the global push for decarbonization intensifies, hydrogen has emerged as a key enabler of deep emissions reductions. While today’s hydrogen economy remains predominantly fossil-based, growing momentum around green and low-carbon hydrogen is catalyzing a strategic shift. This transformation is vital for achieving net-zero targets and building a flexible, resilient, and integrated energy system. Despite the progress, many advanced hydrogen technologies are still maturing, offering untapped potential for cost reduction, efficiency gains, and wider adoption. This report examines the evolving hydrogen technology landscape, with a focus on innovations across production, storage, transport, and end-use applications. On the production side, it highlights advances in green hydrogen through electrolysis, particularly Solid Oxide Electrolysis Cells (SOECs) and Anion Exchange Membrane (AEM) systems, alongside developments in turquoise hydrogen pathways. Storage and transport innovations extend beyond conventional compression or liquefaction, spotlighting novel chemical carriers such as ammonia and Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHCs), as well as solid-state hydrogen storage systems designed for decentralized and mobile uses. The report highlights how these next-generation technologies are shaping the future hydrogen economy, unlocking new possibilities in industrial decarbonization, clean mobility, and grid-scale energy systems. It explores the key drivers accelerating their development, assesses techno-economic dynamics, and examines policy, funding, and infrastructure enables key for commercialization. By offering a strategic view of emerging hydrogen innovations, application readiness, and market viability, this report equips stakeholders with actionable insights to navigate the complex transition toward a clean hydrogen-powered future.

Everest Group’s Location Spotlight reports provide a crisp, insightful assessment of established and emerging/next-wave global services delivery locations by country and city. These reports help global sourcing practitioners or location strategy professionals stay ahead of the competition in understanding key market dynamics and the related opportunities each location presents.