To be or Not to be: The big question in Testing Outsourcing

Outsourced testing or IV&V seems to the buzzword in the IT industry these days.
The lure of an estimated $13 billion global market for software testing seems to have lured almost every IT company worth its salt to give it a shot. We have all the major IT giants in India namely TCS, Infosys(IVS) , Wipro(Interops) , Satyam(QEdge) , CTS , HCL et.c and offcourse a plethora of specialized S/W testing companies like applabs, Relq, stag , thinksoft , puretesting et.c.As the business is booming as we the industry is excited about the $13 billion global testing market , customers looking for huge cost savings (AMR group survey project a 70% cost savings through offshored testing services) , we need to ponder over the impact of IV&V on s/w testing as a discipline. Its high time we asses the impact of these business models on the art , craft and science of S/W testing.Few of the issues i would like to raise here are :

Is the independent testing model affecting the partnership approach between the test team and the other stakeholders in s/w projects?? Are we not supposed to be hand – in – hand (If not hand in glove ) with the s/w developers??

Does this Independent testing render itself to the V-model or are Independent test teams getting involved only at the last stage??

Are there conflict of interests between the development vendors and test vendors?? How are the prejudices of these competitors affecting the deliverables???

Jose Fajardo in his article “Outsourcing Testing Tasks: A Competitive Advantage” speaks on the why and where of test outsourcing like : Plug-In for Temporary Assignments , Automation , Minimize Costs , Special Testing Requirements , Reliable and Independent Results , Help with Compressed Testing Schedules , Equipment, Facilities, Testing Tools, Environments et.cI would like your opinion / thoughts on these issue and would like you to raise new issues in this context.I would share my experiences in a large independent validation assignment for a fortune 5 customer ,who has more that 20 development vendors working for him in the next post.

Regards,
JP