One of the big IT stories of the last 12 months was offshore outsourcing and, in particular, the rise of India's homegrown IT companies. They've started to influence the mainstream tech agenda and challenge the stranglehold of the big western household IT names such as Accenture, CSC, EDS and IBM.

The Indian outsourcing industry has taken a hit in recent months after sting operations by two newspapers uncovered worrying lapses in the security of customer data but, by and large, it has been another good year of double-digit growth for the likes of Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro.

The predicted customer backlash against the banks and other firms who publicly announced plans to move call centre and IT jobs offshore simply failed to materialise outside of small isolated pockets of resistance. Meanwhile trade unions such as Amicus have moved from outright knee-jerk opposition to working with firms to try and make sure some of the offshore savings are reinvested in the future of the affected UK workers.

Despite the continued emergence of other offshore outsourcing locations - eastern Europe, the Philippines, South Africa - India is still leading the way. In one recent landmark deal for the Indian IT companies, Infosys and TCS between them bagged a €300m share of a €1.8bn outsourcing deal with Dutch bank ABN Amro, and in doing so planted their footprint firmly on the global IT services map.

This trend is revealed by the fact Indian IT companies are well represented this year on the Agenda Setters poll, though they didn't rank quite as high as in 2004. TCS CEO S Ramadorai dropped two places to 22 from last year, while Azim Premji, chairman and MD at Wipro, slipped six places to 41.Infosys chairman N R Narayana Murthy is a new entry at number 37.

As the Indian story has become a part of everyday business it has been eclipsed to a large extent by a wider east Asian success story that has been dominated by China.

With a population of 1.3 billion people and an economy that is expected to overtake most western economies in the next five years, China will be a global IT superpower, opening up new markets for western IT companies and influencing future global technology standards and protocols.

But, as was the situation with India 10 years ago, there needs to be extensive modernisation and economic reform within China if the country is to fulfill its potential. As the man charged with this task, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao shows up on the Agenda Setters list at the high rank of number six.

China's homegrown technology companies are also starting to make their mark and, with his company taking on Cisco head-to-head, Huawei Technologies CEO Ren Zhengfei debuts at number 18.

Peter Rowell, executive chairman of Regent Associates and Agenda Setters panellist, said: "China clearly has many dimensions and many are setting an agenda. It's at the political level, it's at the investment level, it's at the contract manufacturing level and it's at the software level - it's all over."

Korea is another Asian country gaining power on the technology front. It is working with China and Japan to develop an Asian version of Linux that can read any program from the three countries and has unveiled plans to roll out the platform to 10,000 schools.

In terms of worldwide brand recognition, the panel pointed to Korea's Samsung - and voted its CEO Kun-Hee Lee into the number seven spot. The Korean minister of information and communication and former Samsung executive Chin Dae Je also broke in, although lower down the list at 46.

The path to being a world IT superpower is not without its obstacles, and issues such as intellectual property rights and data security will need to be addressed by these countries. But with the east and southeast Asian economies growing too, the likes of China, India and Korea are flag-bearers for the onslaught of globalisation that will dictate the future technology trends.