Indian IT Firms: Is the Future Theirs?

[JMaguire]

The average Indian IT professional earns about $850 a month, yet outsourcing to India is playing an ever bigger role in IT. Here's an excerpt from an article on Datamation:


In the old days – say, five years ago – Indian IT firms existed in a kind of tech ghetto. Prosperous American IT companies were the stars of the show, the go-to companies that clients hired when they had mission critical assignments. The Indian companies were the low-cost choice, the place to ship non-essential work to if you needed to shave costs.

But what a difference a few years can make. Many American (and international) IT companies have opened facilities in India, while several India IT firms have opened offices around the world, including North America. Location matters less and less. And when big bucks clients send out a request for proposal, Indian firms bid right alongside blue chip U.S. firms.


--Here's the full piece:

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/net...e.php/36531363


* What's your take? Will Indian outsourcing firms be the dominant players in IT?

[JPnyc]

With no qualifying time frame on the question, I would have to answer "probably", but I don't think it'll be tomorrow or next year.

[plopez]

While there is still some upside in India, there are already signs that they are beginning to hit limits to the growth in the IT field.

Indian firms are beginning to experience a tight labor market, meaning that thier costs will escalate and quality will slip as they attempt to user less qualified workers.
This is very much the same situation experienced by the US in the 90's tech boom. In addition firms are already looking to other countries such as Vietnam and Ghana to fill in the IT support needs.

This does, however, point out a fallacy in how we are looking at support. We are looking to reduce the cost of support by reducing the cost per laborer. However, with the continuous boom in appliances and applications there is not enough labor on the planet to support flawed software. Instead we should be building more reliable software. Because if present trends continu, India will run out of cheap labor, as will Vietnam, Russia, China and any other nation that jumps into the game. Eventually you will hit your resource limits.

[JPnyc]

But that could take a good long time. I mean it's not nearly saturated at this point. I have to believe the economies in those countries are still far from healthy. If they were, we wouldn't see 95% of our spam coming from those countries. There are apparently lots of people there so desperately in need of making a living that they're willing to take a job posting spam on forums to make a few cents.

[ua549]

There was an article in my local newespaper about India outsourcing to Egypt.

In jest they speculated that if the phones were busy, the calls would be transferred to Arizona call centers that hire cheaper illegal Mexican workers that man the lines for less.

[JPnyc]

Well it's a bit different if the end user is the general public, not business persons. There's a grass roots movement in this country rebelling against outsourced call centers. I know I'm incensed by it. If you market your product or service in the USA, give me a support person whose primary language is english.

I'm sure they save a ton outsourcing to India, but then they should market their products there, I say.