Outsourcing could be defined as the shifting or delegating a company's day to day operations or business process to an external service provider, done in anticipation of a better quality, lower rates and in a sense getting an edge over one's competitors. When a company's operations or business processes are outsourced to firms in foreign countries, often to take advantage of cheap skilled labor, it is referred to as Offshore outsourcing or Offshoring.

Where functions previously performed by an organisation are supplied under contract from a third party.

Buying goods or services instead of producing or providing them in-house.

While outsourcing is not exactly a new innovation, the shifts that have occurred recently in this space are worth noting. As the need for e-learning moves higher up on the IT and corporate training agendas, organizations are wont to take on the IT management burden of implementing a learning management system (LMS).

The concept of taking internal company functions and paying an outside firm to handle them. Outsourcing is done to save money, improve quality, or free company resources for other activities. Outsourcing was first done in the data-processing industry and has spread to areas, including telemessaging and IT departments. Outsourcing is the wave of the future.

A long-term, results-oriented relationship with an external service provider for activities traditionally performed within the company. Outsourcing usually applies to a complete business process. It implies a degree of managerial control and risk on the part of the provider.

The transfer of components or large segments of an organization's internal IT infrastructure, staff, processes or applications to an external resource such as an Application Service Provider.