Social media analytics and cloud is the latest of so many flavours of the month. That a large corporation with hidebound rules and a process driven nature sucks at it all and is occasionally too slow to jump onto a trend - and even there tries to use stuff made by their existing enterprise vendors .. that doesn't surprise me.
All this is till the next bus pulls in - all the previous buses that depended on huge and ill paid relatively junior resources billed as top experts in rfps and h1b paperwork have long left the terminus, and aren't likely to return. TCS seems to be a minor exception to that rule given their effort to find social media and online related talent within their company, and tapping people like Krish Ashok for a company wide, high level effort. But every Indian company just needs to anticipate the next bus coming down the pike and be ready to jump on it. What that bus is, when it will come and how fast it will be moving is an open question. --srs > On 15-Oct-2016, at 8:52 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan <che...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Comments? > > > http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/737W8zcjPA6lGWIajRCd6K/Indian-software-dies-at-17-from-failure-to-grasp-future.html > > > Indian software dies at 17 from failure to grasp future > The Indian software services industry died on Friday after a short > battle with newer digital technologies >  > A slowdown alone wouldn’t have stopped the Indian industry if it had > been able to embrace ‘smac,’ or social, mobile, analytics and > cloud-based technologies. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint > > Singapore: Seventeen years ago an Indian man from New Delhi mesmerized > the technology departments of global corporations with a doomsday > story many times more puffed up than the luxuriant crop of hair he > sported. > The latter was a wig, and the former was just bad science fiction > packaged by consultants as a $600 billion hair-raiser. But Dewang > Mehta, the chief lobbyist for India’s fledgling software services > industry, carried off both with aplomb, convincing businesses that at > the stroke of midnight of the new millennium, their computer systems > would crash because old programs measured years in two digits instead > of four. The solution, he persuaded them, was to let a horde of > techies from Bangalore and Hyderabad go through each line of code and > fix the Y2K bug. > > That was the birth of India’s massively successful software services > industry, which died on Friday after a short battle with newer digital > technologies. At the time of its demise, the business was worth $110 > billion in annual export revenue. > The first hint that the end was near came on Thursday when Tata > Consultancy Services, the biggest Indian software vendor by market > value, announced a virtual stalling of its business in the September > quarter from the previous three months. After Infosys followed up by > slashing its full-year revenue guidance for the second time in three > months, it was time to turn off the ventilator. > > > #Infosys revenue growth pre-Lehman > > A coroner’s inquiry unearthed three signs of decay, the first of which > shows how Indian companies’ cheap-talent-fueled growth ran out of > breath. In the four quarters before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, > Infosys saw revenue increase an average 29% in constant-currency > terms. Back then, Dublin-based Accenture’s growth was just half as > high. But there’s nothing exceptional about Indian companies’ > expansion anymore. All that investors have heard from managements this > year is gloomy commentary on how challenging it’s become to get > clients to open their wallets. When the companies do make news > nowadays, it’s more often for dodgy business practices, regulatory > slaps on the wrist, and senior-level exits. > > A slowdown alone wouldn’t have stopped the Indian industry if it had > been able to embrace “smac,” or social, mobile, analytics and > cloud-based technologies. But the vendors wasted so much time > defending their legacy business of writing code for and maintaining > purpose-built enterprise applications that they failed to make a mark > in the new digital world. > > As an analysis from Mint shows, the dominant trio of Tata Consultancy, > Infosys and Wipro between them had 1.5 times more workers doing > digital stuff last year than Accenture. But the revenue they garnered > was 40% less than what the latter chalked up from newer technologies. > That makes the typical digital-tech employee of an Indian vendor 25% > as efficient as his counterpart at the global consultant. This gap > sets the clock back on Indian companies, which have taken years to > narrow the productivity differential: > Maybe it’s just banking clients and their inability to pay like they > once did. Or perhaps it’s a combination of weak global growth, Brexit, > protectionism and Donald Trump’s vacillating stance on US visas for > Indian technology workers. Hoping that turbulence is temporary, > investors are still paying a hefty premium for future growth. They may > get lucky for a while. Still, a dead-cat bounce from delayed orders > coming through would hardly count as proof of life. > > The millennium scare got Indian software a foot in the door at global > corporations. But now the shoe is on the other foot. Robotics and > artificial intelligence are putting the vendors’ labour-intensive > business at risk of obsolescence. Even if the concern is as puffed up > as Y2K, with plenty of growth candidates in the Indian start-up world, > at least for some investors it may be time to back new horses rather > than flog dead ones. >
