The Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market which is set to grow more than 60 per cent by 2010, has led to a number of IT firms establishing a presence in Australia.

Aptara this week opened a new office in Sydney, Australia, in response to growing customer demand.

The new office will allow Aptara to scale their BPO services to a growing number of Australian customers.

The high adoption rates were revealed in a joint research report undertaken by IDC and Accenture.

It found CIOs across all industries are implementing BPO to remove costs or to support a transformation agenda.

BPO spending by local CIOs is set to reach US$3.84 billion by 2010.

Aptara chief technologist, Gurvinder Batra, said the new office also underscores the growing popularity of integrated publishing technologies.

"Enterprises across many vertical markets are realizing the benefits our integrated suite of content transformation services delivers to their bottom line," he said.

The Sydney office will focus on three critical support areas including publishing services.

Batra said Aptara managed 2.75 million first pass pages in 2007.

He said data conversion was the second area of support for the business with Aptara providing conversion to various e-formats including eBooks, XML/HTML, and Web sites.

Aptara also helps the world's largest organizations strengthen their performance by building world-class modules for employees and customers.

The Australian office will help firms develop Web-based, computer-based and instructor-led packages.

Based in Sydney, is Sameer Arora, director of publishing, and David Glasson, director of e-learning services.

"Both appointments bring a wealth of outsourcing knowledge to Aptara that will be instrumental in expanding our presence in Australia," Batra added.