Even moving information between two teams in the same company has its costs. The largest projects I've worked on (70-odd people) have worked best when everyone

Even moving information between two teams in the same company has its costs. The largest projects I've worked on (70-odd people) have worked best when everyone was working together in the same office. Matching that kind of efficiency with teams in different offices is impossible, let alone when they work for different companies. Edit: Which isn't to say that outsourcing is impossible to implement well. But it needs to be things with well understood requirements so that little communication is needed. The more communication that is required, the harder it is to make it work well.