About three or four years ago, offshore outsourcing was a hugely controversial topic – enough to make the front page of the Daily Mail if a major call centre was outsourced to India.

Even within the IT community, it was a subject that induced much fear and loathing. Any writers for this magazine’s mothership, Computing, who dared suggest that offshoring was actually a good thing, and that the real issue was not jobs being sent to India, but the lack of skills training and development in the UK, were met with a vociferous response from certain readers.

And I mean really vociferous, sometimes personal, occasionally offensive, and all too often not without a hint of xenophobia. Today, an article on offshoring raises barely a whisper.

When Computing first visited India in 2003, executives at outsourcing vendors in the subcontinent were openly fearful of the backlash – Western firms turning against offshoring, especially in the US where George Bush’s Presidential re-election campaign had majored on a protectionist attitude to IT jobs.

Today, Indian companies are starting to maintain and create jobs in the UK – witness Tata Consultancy Services’ takeover of Pearl’s insurance business last year.

There can be few areas of the IT industry where attitudes have changed so dramatically in such a short space of time. At last, the debate is turning to the challenges and opportunities presented by the rise of the Asian IT industry.

For UK IT leaders, it will become increasingly difficult to ignore the effect of India and China. More and more firms bringing in suppliers to help with software development, application maintenance or technical support will find that at least part of that service is delivered from India. And more of the hardware being purchased will be manufactured in China.

An understanding of the Asian effect will be an important part of the role for chief information officers (CIOs).

Employers and headhunters will be attracted to those IT experts that can demonstrate experience of dealing with Indian firms and an appreciation of how they can help improve IT strategy for the good of the company.

And for some of the most ambitious CIOs, time spent working or on secondment in China and India will make for a powerful CV.

The acceptance of offshore outsourcing is a good thing. The opportunity for CIOs that India and China offer is even better.