If you are wondering what else a company can outsource after its human resources, information technology function, pay-roll, back office processing etc, here is the answer.

Organisations, especially those in the IT sector are now outsourcing their quality assurance function.

V A Sastry, a director of Bangalore-based Musa Software Engineering, a company, which undertakes such quality assurance works from IT firms, said, "Small and medium organisations in the IT sector have realised that quality inspection and assurance functions are not part of their line of function. They also feel that staffing in quality assurance department is different from their normal recruitment function."

Musa has already taken up quality outsourcing for three companies, SDG Software and Strabus Systems of Hyderabad and Cadus Technologies of Bangalore. According to the company, there are many companies trying to outsource their quality functions.

"The larger companies will not go for quality outsourcing but it is the small and medium companies with staff size of 100-150 that are going for this option," said Sastry, who was also a founder director of Infosys Technologies but parted ways in 1995.

The continuing slowdown is another reason forcing companies to opt for outsourcing quality function to cut down costs, he added.

Musa Software has recently got its 77th IT client certified ISO 9000. The company has also helped 12 companies attain SEI-CMM (capability maturity model) assessment in its six years of existence.

We started the company with a motto to replicate many more Infosys like companies and Narayana Murthy and others at Infosys constantly supported us, Sastry said.

Out of the 77 companies that we provided consulting services, only six got closed for different reasons while others have grown by atleast four to five times, he claimed.