Well, at least from where I sit they're still getting plenty of business as with the apparent sun-setting of the H1-B program companies are just hiring offshoring firms instead.
Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence
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Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence
#12This is still very shallow thinking. Every company that views tech as a cost rather than a way to generate revenue will invest in these contracts/offshore centres, and that is the noose round their neck.
In most cases, but not all, hiring consultants suggests you don't understand enough about your own business to manage it yourself (insert image of senior executive trying to work out the Zoom so they can check their staff aren't slacking off like their damn nephew, useless kid, thinks he knows everything). The cost advantages really aren't that large either...sure, the staff cost less but they hire 10x more staff, they are slower, and when the requirements change you are done for.
Btw, some places are very good for outsourcing (Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus) but India is definitely not one of them imo...which is bizarre given how many engineers, prevalence of English, etc.
Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence
#13I recently joined a company where my main task is to modernise a business critical application built and supported by Wipro over ten years ago. Everything is still on .Net 3.0 (first released in 2007), and despite hundreds of pages of documentation the developers seem to have little understanding of what the application actually does for the business. The impression I have is that their business model is geared towar…
Can relate to that. I used to work for tech mahindra and they were using vb6 and .NET 2.0 for a major client even as late as 2014 when I quit from there. Its most likely that they are still using that old stack because its typically difficult to justify migration costs to a newer stack.
Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence
#14[deleted]
Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence
#15It boils down to the Business Model.
Having worked extensively with the major Indian vendors, with people from India in different settings, onsite and offshore, I observed that they simply focus on labor costs in Europe and elsewhere.
Salespeople tried to sell us dozens of teams with “cheap” developers of every skillset we wanted.
But that is not how software is done. I want outcomes not masses. I need creativity to work on tools expressed through software not cheaper developers.
I felt sorry for my Indian dev friends that the true value of these folks was left off the board.
Salespeople always tried to solve a problem with another “cheap team”. Enter SaaS...
Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence
#16I recently joined a company where my main task is to modernise a business critical application built and supported by Wipro over ten years ago. Everything is still on .Net 3.0 (first released in 2007), and despite hundreds of pages of documentation the developers seem to have little understanding of what the application actually does for the business. The impression I have is that their business model is geared towar…
Adding to this. I've worked with people from Tech Mahindra. Some observations.
1. Very green staff that have little to no coding skills/ability.
2. Communication barriers, even when the people are local.
3. Jobs that any other organization would do with one person being split into 3 different roles with a net result of costing more than hiring the more expensive onshore devs.
4. Because of #3 software takes longer to deliver resulting in more money spent on people who are onshore.
Many of these efforts are akin to putting a bunch of monkeys in front of typewriters and expecting to get the next Shakespeare. The old "Mythical Man Month" book by Fred Brooks still holds true and it is truly astounding that organizations continue to make the same mistakes and not learn from history etc..
Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence
#17I recently joined a company where my main task is to modernise a business critical application built and supported by Wipro over ten years ago. Everything is still on .Net 3.0 (first released in 2007), and despite hundreds of pages of documentation the developers seem to have little understanding of what the application actually does for the business. The impression I have is that their business model is geared towar…
I don't think this is a fair assumption. The work is going to be defined by the client... so if the client wants .Net 3.0 experts to maintain a legacy system, then that's what they are going to get. I have worked for and with Indian IT firms (I'm not Indian myself) and in most cases the directive is to use latest standards and best practices. In my case it has to do with cloud architectures. Outsourcing is something…
I pretty much agree with you, if the client doesn't have any in-house expertise and stays hands-off then you get the scenario I described but outsourcing can work if it's in addition to in-house expertise.
In this case the client didn't want .Net 3.0 experts to support a legacy app, that's what the consultants built it in and then let it turn into legacy by not performing regular maintenance.
The client didn't know that it was becoming legacy until it was too late because they never developed the in-house expertise to understand what was necessary and the consultants have no incentive to do it by themselves. In fact they can charge more by letting it rot and requiring development of a whole new project to replace the legacy.
Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence
#18There is little substance in the article. Biggest point made is that enterprise software is easier to administer and use. I feel they entirely missed the elephant in the room : SaaS.
Yes, SaaS and even IaaS and PaaS are the ultimate outsourcing. Outsourcing that actually works since it's not simply swapping a US based high paid human for a low paid off shore human. Instead it's swapping a human for automation, that's real savings for customers, even after margin for the automation creator.
Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence
#19I recently joined a company where my main task is to modernise a business critical application built and supported by Wipro over ten years ago. Everything is still on .Net 3.0 (first released in 2007), and despite hundreds of pages of documentation the developers seem to have little understanding of what the application actually does for the business. The impression I have is that their business model is geared towar…
These firms specialized in digital transformation. But the digital transformation is over, now its the digital cleanup. The companies that understood the benefits of digital technology moved to it, and the majority of the others went out of business. In this new phase, your digital infrastructure allows you to move quickly, or you lose business to those that can move quickly. A lot of these old legacy applications, as useful as they are weren't made to be easily updated.
I'd bet Corona virus is probably going to accelerate this. The amount of change going on in is so great that those that adapt the quickest will weather the storm the best.
Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence
#20Major IT companies in India get a lot of revenue from maintainence projects and there is usually no scope for making major changes or innovating there.
The time and material billing for these make it quite attractive from a revenue point vs fixed bid greenfield projects. I don't think that situation will change anytime time soon as along as these companies stick to services.