Outsourcing

Off shore outsourcing is when a company utilizes a workforce outside of the country the company actually resides.  For example Parature's main office is located in Norther Virginia, yet they outsource part of the quality assurance work to a team in the Ukraine.  When a company outsources off shore the rest of the employees do run into a few problems.  One such problem is that the off shore site is not usually in the same time zone as the other team and can run into problems when trying to work together, however this can be good when a company wishes to have employees on the clock around the clock with out having to have someone work outside of regular hours.  Many US IT firms do utilize off shore outsourcing including Parature.  One of the main things that does get outsourced is help desk for many companies.  If a end user has a problem with a technological product and they call customer support there is a good chance the person taking the call is not actually located in the US as the labor cost of the off shore sites is typically much less than any US location.  As a result sometimes the service can suffer which then also hurts the company who employed the off shore site, as they don't have much direct control over the site.

H1B Visas

H1B visa is a visa allowing US firms to employ foreign workers with a high skill set into the US and actually allows the workers to live legally in the US for 3 years which is extendable.  The visa is only valid as long as the person is employed by the sponsor of the visa, usually the hiring company.  The industries with the highest H1B hiring rates tend to be related to IT work or computer sciences, with colleges being close behind.

One issue with H1B visas the article brought up is that regulations are now requiring the company to have at least 50% of their work force be locally hired.  This actually caused the Indian firm to expand rapidly in the US and actually have begun hiring more and more of the local work force instead of resorting to using primarily H1B visa workforce.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/indian-it-firms-stephiring-inus/462917/