Kawan-kawan, Daripada bertengkar soal politik kekuasaan dan dakwah melulu, mari membahas soal kemajuan. Salam, RM
Outsourcing to India The latest in remote control Sep 9th 2004 | BANGALORE AND NOIDA >From The Economist print edition Reuters After the call-centre, now the IT department is off to India IN A shiny new building in the drab construction site that is Noida, a Delhi suburb, teams of young Indian engineers are, in a manner of speaking, managing the world. A number of America's best-known companies have entrusted the remote running of part of their global computing networks to HCL Comnet. This information-technology services firm is at the crest of what Gartner, a consultancy, has called �the next big wave� of Indian outsourcing deals, covering remote �infrastructure-management services�. India's outsourcing boom started with software development and has expanded into a whole range of business services that can be handled a continent away, of which the country's hundreds of call-centres are just the most prominent examples. This takes that trend one stage further, and shifts offshore much of the administration and maintenance of a firm's IT systems. Gartner's Partha Iyengar divides remote IMS work into three categories: monitoring global network operations; providing helpdesk support and maintenance; and administering databases. It is as yet a small part of India's IT business. According to NASSCOM, the Indian industry's lobby, the country's exports from the software, other IT services and business-process-outsourcing industries grew by more than 25% to $12 billion last year, of which infrastructure services accounted for just over $300m. But the potential is huge. A report by Deutsche Bank puts the entire size of the global infrastructure-management market at $86 billion. Firms have been outsourcing infrastructure management for years. Arno Franz, of TPI, an outsourcing consultancy, describes it as an industry created in the 1970s and 1980s by EDS, an American giant that came out of efforts by General Motors to automate its car plants. Along with IBM, EDS still dominates the business. Often these firms would actually buy their clients' computer systems. Or they would have annual maintenance contracts. Either way, their customer had fixed their information-technology costs and were free to concentrate on their �core competencies�. Vineet Nayar, HCL Comnet's chief executive, says this model was disrupted by three trends that converged in 2001. The recession in the information-technology industry left many customers locked into fixed-price contracts and unable to take advantage of falling costs. Second, information-technology departments, having invested fortunes over the previous few years, suddenly found their budgets frozen. And third, the growth of e-business accustomed firms to dealing with distant server �farms�. India's chance So there was a move away from the �total outsourcing� of computer systems, to the �discrete� outsourcing of parts of it, including those functions that can be handled remotely. That is where the opportunity lies for Indian firms, with the telecommunications links built for their software businesses and the outsourcing of other business processes. Gartner estimates that between 60% and 70% of the services surrounding a data centre can be executed at a distance. Mr Nayar sees the outsourcing of that work to India as a �megatrend�. As evidence, he cites his firm's client list, which includes some of the biggest names in American business, in fields ranging from investment banking to software to engines to sporting goods. The big American firms also offer services out of India, and other local firms are competing for a share of the market, notably Wipro. G.K. Prasanna, who runs Wipro's �technology-infrastructure services� division, says he has been preaching for the past five years that this is the next big thing. A recent survey by the firm of 145 executives in a range of industries found that about a third had plans to manage some of their computerinfrastructure offshore. Like Mr Nayar, Mr Prasanna argues that the advantages for the client go beyond mere cost savings, offering higher levels of service�because problem solving is remote, so is identification. A glitch can be fixed before it is reported. This is a business, unlike call-centres, where time differences with America and Europe work in India's favour. Cost, however, remains the big factor. One HCL Comnet client is Extreme Networks, a California-based switching-technology firm. Paul Hooper, one of its vice-presidents, estimates that outsourcing the management of part of his computer infrastructure has cut the �total cost of ownership� of it by an average of 40%. That is incentive enough to live with the risks and drawbacks that come with any type of outsourcing to India: the country's high rates of staff attrition and poor civil infrastructure being the most obvious. Some analysts remain sceptical about whether Indian firms are big enough to make much of a dent in this market. The largest of them make annual revenues of not much more than $1 billion compared with about 20 times as much at, for example, EDS. TPI's Mr Franz says that the Indian firms cannot hope to match the huge computer-processing capacity of the American giants, and that any share they win of this market will be �marginal�. The Indian firms counter that the remote business they are chasing is not infrastructure-intensive. They are confident India will gain market share. Gartner and Deutsche Bank predict a trebling in exports related to managing computer infrastructure to $1 billion in three years; NASSCOM goes for $1.5 billion-2 billion in five years. But NASSCOM has also forecast that India's total information technology and related exports will exceed $50 billion in 2008. So even the bullish-sounding projections about �infrastructure-management services� hardly suggest a revolution either in the global outsourcing market or in the structure of India's information-technology industry: not so much one big wave; more a rising tide. Copyright � 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/BRUplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> *************************************************************************** Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. 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