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Taming
the dragon
A few years ago, China was the cause of considerable heartburn
for the satraps of the Indian software exports industry. More
so after the Chinese government vowed to get a sizeable share
of the software services market. Indian IT companies felt
the heat, especially as Chinese companies were known to be
aggressive players that penetrated and dominated almost every
industry they ventured into.
Moving
up the value chain
While the Indian BPO/ITeS industry is growing at a staggering
rate of over 50 percent year-on-year, most of its growth has
come from voice-based services. Due to pricing pressures,
Indian BPO players want to move into the niche and high-margin
services. Take the case of Wipro Spectramind. It has hired
PhDs in molecular biology to maintain a database for a genomics
knowledge management company in the US.
The
innovators
India’s much ballyhooed software exports industry commands
about 2 percent of the overall global IT services market valued
at $450 billion by IDC. While focussing on low-end IT services
has proved lucrative for Indian houses, it isn’t enough
if India Software Inc is to get more than a marginal share
in global IT spending. Against this background, the efforts
of a number of small and mid-sized companies that are creating
intellectual property (IP) is laudable.
Managing
networks worldwide
Remote infrastructure management is a relatively new opportunity
that could prove to be the next gold mine for Indian software
service firms. Currently, most Indian players derive their
revenues from services such as packaged application implementation,
application development and integration.
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