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Indian
software companies have relentlessly pursued the goal of reaching
the highest standards in quality. Not surprisingly, as of
October 2001, India had 32 companies at SEI CMM Level 5 assessment,
when there are only about 58 organisations across the world
which have acquired this assessment. The focus on quality
on the part of Indian majors has in turn attracted many global
vendors like Rational and Spectrum Software, who have started
looking at the Indian market in a big way.
Says Sarathi Srinivasan, president, Spectrum Software, “We
undoubtedly have a big market potential waiting to be tapped
in India. One of the primary reasons is the fact that India
has the most number of CMM-level 4 and CMM-level 5 certified
IT organisations, all of whom are very process oriented. The
worldwide configuration management industry according to OVUM
is currently pegged at $2.5 billion and projected at $6.5
billion by 2005. According to OVUM, the worldwide sales distribution
was 66 percent in the US, 26 percent in Europe, while the
rest of the world contributes about 8 percent. So if we assume
that even if one percent contribution will come from the Indian
market space with its vast number of IT organisations, it
converts to a mammoth $65 million opportunity. This potential
is bound to grow as the IT industry continues to flourish.”
Though Rational has a major presence in the Indian market,
Spectrum believes it can capture a significant pie of marketshare
because of its entry-level pricing. This could give Spectrum
a foothold in sectors like small and medium companies that
don’t buy Software Configuration Management (SCM) tools
since they are very expensive. Adds Srinivasan, “If we
consider all IT organisations in India and take about 20 percent
of the software engineers amongst these organisations, we
can easily target 15,000 to 25,000 licenses. Our first year
goals are 1,000 licenses and the second year target is 10,000
licenses. The third and fourth year goals are 1,00,000 and
1 million user licenses. This translates to $0.6 million,
$6.5 million, $65 million, and $582 million for years 1 to
4 respectively for SpectrumSCM.”
Industry analysts believe that Spectrum could score over its
competitors since it is a 100 percent Java-based product,
which makes it platform independent. The product offers Source
Configuration Management, which is not confined to just software
configuration or even source control, but a whole product
life-cycle tracking of product source, whether it is documents,
images, Web pages or standard software source code. Every
source is tracked from the day it is introduced under SpectrumSCM,
thereby effectively controlling all product builds or releases.
Though the slowdown in the economy has affected the market
for such tools, Spectrum is banking on the constant quality
focus of Indian software companies. Explains Srinivasan, “Fundamentally,
though organisations are watching their budgets, many organisations
in India today are trying to improve productivity by improving
their processes using SCM tools.”
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