It Software Outsourcing to India: Is It at a Crossroad? (original) (raw)
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The discussion on high technology has been concerned with advanced capitalist economies. Developing countries have been unable to alter radically their industrial structure due to numerous internal institutional and external technological barriers. Consequently, they have sought global participation through outsourcing activities. This is indeed a welcome break from previous orthodox 'self-reliant' approaches. However, excessive dependence on outsourcing limits the synergy between vibrant domestic and foreign markets. Using the Indian experience, this paper argues that international outsourcing of software, while commercially lucrative, is discouraging firms from taking on more complex projects at home. It highlights the shortcomings of outsourcing from India and suggests that software development must be rooted in a high technology policy that is integrated with the broader strategy of development. The study illustrates not only the relative success of a developing country but also underscores the persistent unequalising structural mechanisms that developing countries must contend with to foster local development.
Ravichandran, N.(Hg.): Competition in Indian Industries …, 1999
We thank the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for supporting this research. We are grateful to the many people in the software industry, both in India and the United States, who have given generously of their time and expertise. We have benefited from the help and advice from many colleagues, especially Raj Reddy and Bankim Shah, and seminar participants at the NBER, Boston and SPRU, Sussex. Seema Chawla provided helpful suggestions for the research. Zhaoli Rong, Hairong He and Jason Wang provided competent research assistance. We welcome comments and suggestions. For reasons of confidentiality, firms and respondents have not been identified. Please do not cite without permission. We welcome comments and suggestions.
Software outsourcing and development policy implications: an Indian perspective
International Journal of Technology Management, 2002
The discussion on high technology has been concerned with advanced capitalist economies. Developing countries have been unable to alter radically their industrial structure due to numerous internal institutional and external technological barriers. Consequently, they have sought global participation through outsourcing activities. This is indeed a welcome break from previous orthodox 'self-reliant' approaches. However, excessive dependence on outsourcing limits the synergy between vibrant domestic and foreign markets. Using the Indian experience, this paper argues that international outsourcing of software, while commercially lucrative, is discouraging firms from taking on more complex projects at home. It highlights the shortcomings of outsourcing from India and suggests that software development must be rooted in a high technology policy that is integrated with the broader strategy of development. The study illustrates not only the relative success of a developing country but also underscores the persistent unequalising structural mechanisms that developing countries must contend with to foster local development.
The Indian software services industry
Research Policy, 2001
We thank the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for supporting this research. We are grateful to the many people in the software industry, both in India and the United States, who have given generously of their time and expertise. We have benefited from the help and advice from many colleagues, especially Raj Reddy and Bankim Shah, and seminar participants at the NBER, Boston and SPRU, Sussex. Seema Chawla provided helpful suggestions for the research. Zhaoli Rong, Hairong He and Jason Wang provided competent research assistance. We welcome comments and suggestions. For reasons of confidentiality, firms and respondents have not been identified. Please do not cite without permission. We welcome comments and suggestions.
D'Costa Book India in the Global Software Industry
India in the Global Software Industry: Innovation, Firm Strategies and Development, 2004
This research volume is the first book-length study of the Indian software industry in the last seven years. The project originated with a suggestion made by R. Narasimhan, one of the pioneers of computer science in India. He was a senior member of the team which designed and built TIFRAC, the first electronic digital computer that was designed, built and operated in India (at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, in the 1950s). E. Sridharan, director of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (UPIASI), expanded the idea and developed it into a fully-fledged proposal. The Institute, set up in New Delhi in 1997, is an affiliate of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI), University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The Center, established in 1992, was created to undertake studies of contemporary India. Sridharan raised funds from seven sources and identified participant scholars from several institutions in India, the United States, Canada and Israel. Anthony P. D’Costa, one of the invited participants, later came on board as a co-editor of the volume and played an active editorial role from the end of 2000 onwards. The project was driven by the need to understand the factors that contributed to or hindered innovation in the Indian IT industry, especially the software sector. The Indian software industry was then one of the few internationally competitive and large export-oriented industries in India, and also classified as a high-technology industry. It was observed that the globally competitive Indian software industry, though expanding throughout the decade at an annual compound rate of 40–50 per cent, was overwhelmingly based on the export of personnel for low value-added, on-site work. It was evident that this business model of ‘bodyshopping’ would not be sustainable in the long run or would consign the Indian industry to low valueadded activities. Indian IT would have to diversify its markets by reducing its dependence on the US market and go beyond ‘bodyshopping’ to innovate new products and services. Strategies would have to include exploiting new IT areas such as the Internet, creating niche products for both the domestic and world markets, integrating software and hardware in embedded IT products, and spinning off technologies developed for the defence/space complex into commercially successful products. A comprehensive research project on innovation in the Indian IT industry, it was believed, would be a useful first step towards this.
Management at the Outsourcing Destination - Global Software Development in India
2009
In Global Software Engineering Research, there have been many studies carried out from the perspective of the company who is outsourcing software development. However, very few studies focus on the companies to whom the software development is being outsourced. In this paper, we highlight India as a major outsourcing destination and present experience from companies that manage outsourced software development.. In carrying out this activity, Indian software companies have confronted various issues which are local, remote, internal and external and for which solutions have been instigated. This paper presents research carried out within Indian software companies in which we investigated issues faced when implementing global software development and the solutions used by these companies. We present these solutions so that they can be followed by other outsourcing destinations thus enabling them to operate successfully across geographical, national and international cultural boundaries.