IT in India

barneysplash

Hi all

When I was small, if you thought of India you thought of Yoga and Elephants.
But today Inida is fast becoming the world heavyweight in IT.

I've seen pictures and some news features about Bangalore and Hyderabad,
they dwarf anything Ireland has to offer for any sector of IT.

How did they get so good at IT so quickly?

How can we learn from them?

Has anyone in here ever been to India, or are they any expat Indians who
can offer comments?

Thanks / Namaste

Cuddlesworth

Cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap labor. But like most things thats going out. And when the cheap labor runs out and the multi nationals move to china you will see a severe economic downturn. This is because they have done little to create a name for themselves, having little or no original ideas or company's.

calex71

barneysplash wrote: »

Hi all


How did they get so good at IT so quickly?

Thanks / Namaste

News to me, I used to work for one of the biggest global IT companies in managed services and our server support was based there, from my experiences with these guys ( very cool guys truth be told) they really didnt know jack s*it other than to follow the script on the call loggin program and even the guys in wintel where the same 90% where just incapable of thinking for themselves , of course there where a few brigth ones who's direct line numbers where quickly obtained

requiem1

I think just cause of the threat of everything getting sourced to India doesn't make them great at IT the same way call centres do not mean your problem can or will be solved over the phone. Its all down to labour and the cost of it but I suppose in a way they're not too removed from ourselves around 15 years back when technology companies came over here. If anything i'd say india is set to get better at IT.

Overheal

Cheap Labor and Willingness to learn and work. Something that Western Society seems to lack.

DublinWriter

It's all down to the cheapness of the available labour pool.

Also remember that most of the IT work carried out in India could arguably be called 'low-end', e.g. testing and support.

China is the one to watch here. From around 2002, all students are thought English in schools from ages 4 to 16. Not only is China's labour cheaper than India's but personally I think the Chinese character is more risk-orientated and they are less deferential than Indians and Japanese.

Overheal

rethink that last sentence a bit, Dub o_0 re: chinese

good point about low end there. but with a huge population to pick from theres got to be a fair elite breed of highly skilled work to choose from as well I can only presume.

Skud

Overheal wrote: »

rethink that last sentence a bit, Dub o_0 re: chinese

good point about low end there. but with a huge population to pick from theres got to be a fair elite breed of highly skilled work to choose from as well I can only presume.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0833623/ - worth looking at regarding this topic Gives you a better understanding of what's going on in india at the minute at the very least.

Alun

DublinWriter wrote: »

China is the one to watch here. From around 2002, all students are thought English in schools from ages 4 to 16.

It's a pity they don't do it here too

Anti

barneysplash wrote: »

Hi all

When I was small, if you thought of India you thought of Yoga and Elephants.
But today Inida is fast becoming the world heavyweight in IT.

I've seen pictures and some news features about Bangalore and Hyderabad,
they dwarf anything Ireland has to offer for any sector of IT.

How did they get so good at IT so quickly?

How can we learn from them?

Has anyone in here ever been to India, or are they any expat Indians who
can offer comments?

Thanks / Namaste

Dont forget india has a population how many times bigger then ireland? And the reason is labour is much cheaper there. If only they could be tought some IT knowledge, instead of reading from a script/knowledge base.

barneysplash

I think India is about more than cheap labour and call centre outsourcing.

In the early days, that's how India has got the business, but since then
India has moved up the value chain big time.

Companies like Infosys and Tata are designing and selling software
and services globally. You may not have heard of these firms, but
you've used their software somewhere in your daily life.

The Indian equivelant of NASA, the ISRO can launch satellites cheaper
than any other space agency.

Capt'n Midnight

barneysplash wrote:

Companies like Infosys and Tata are designing and selling software .

Tata the guys who own Land Rover ?

unfortunatly the word is cheap, the metrics seem to be how quick your call is answered and how few repeat calls there are rather than customers satisified and problem sorted. The problem is not the quality of the employees, but rather that the employers and multinationals would employ people with very little real world experiance

I really hate when it sounds like a script. And I still find that most of the constonants are hard to distinguish for some operators.

not too sure how true it is but the stay at work late / stay till the job is done ethic is different over there

Cuddlesworth

barneysplash wrote: »

The Indian equivelant of NASA, the ISRO can launch satellites cheaper than any other space agency.

Is that because of efficiency or simply because they are backed by cheap labour. And with raising wages what happens then?

coldfire1x

It seems everyone is taking about CALL CENTRES in India here. That's not really IT, thats only back office work.

Indians have made really good progress in IT, software development to be specific.

I cant name my company but at any point of time, atleast 20 IT professionals are working (in India) on various IT projects and delivering quality work back here.

You name new tech and they know it, if they dont know they will learn it. They dont seem to say NO about any tech solutions.

OP was saying about IT in India and not the call centres. Call centre experiance is probably right for most.

You have call centres here for AIB and other Insurance companies but do you really call them IT??? Naaah..... Thats different.

barneysplash

coldfire1x wrote: »

You have call centres here for AIB and other Insurance companies but do you really call them IT??? Naaah..... Thats different.

Good point, call centres are not IT at all, I think some people consider them IT because
they are oursourceable like high end Software development work.

India has it's problems, like any country, but I really think they've got
the IT Knowledge Economy perfected.

Here is a video of the Infosys Bangalore Campus
I wish we had something like this in Ringsend...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osFCN4iU-hI

pratheesh

Hi Guys,
Almost like any other major systemic change, moving towards outsourcing should be considered as a major project and you gotta do the homework first.
The reason most companies fail is due to lack of a proper transition plan. You need to put some time and effort into areas such as vendor selection, knowledge transfer etc.

In recent years cheap labour is not the only reason why companies are looking towards India. There has been a steady shift towards quality.
Someone mentioned about risk taking. I dont believe that is true. Just look at the top 10 wealthiest people in the World today. Look at Tata buying Landrover and Jaguar..

As for quality softwares, a few well known examples are Sugarcrm, Kayako Support suite etc..

The company I work for recently decided to send most of its non-strategic work to India apart from software development. No just because of Cost and Quality factor, but mainly because this allowed the staff to give more attention to the customers.
I dont understand why people are making such a big fuss out of things like Hibernian sending jobs to India !!.. In todays economy any smart organization would like to focus on Strategic Customer related issues and if outsourcing provides them the means to do that, they should !!.. I'm sure that if these people who complain had their own companies, they'd do the same..
There will always be countries like India, China etc who are willing and able to do work for less cost. You just have to think about how to use it for the greater good of all ..