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by Cheetah from West St. Louis County

Last Post 11 days, 19 hours Ago


IT: India-Style
May 21, 2008 | 11:16 AM
Category: Political
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Bangalore, India is supposed to be the IT capital of the world.

To bolster their P&L [profit and loss] statements, more and more large U.S. corporations -- and small to mid-size companies -- are offshoring their IT operations to India.  In fact...

Many Fortune 500 corporations offshore their entire IT department! -- including both internal operations [IT infrastructure and management] and external IT activities [product innovation, customer services, computer help-desk operations, technical support]. 

Plus, they may offshore their entire IT workforce. After all, the costs of labor in India is exponentially cheap -- $30 per hour on American soil translates to about $2 to $6 per hour on Indian soil.  

Bangalore, India may market itself as the IT capital of the world -- and the global leader for IT talent -- but if you've ever visited India or seen photos of India-based infrastructure for telecommunications, 2 questions come to mind:   

  • Is India's IT truly better -- higher quality and more reliable -- than America's brand of IT?

  • Is IT created and managed on Indian soil -- by Native Indians [and Americans who've relocated there] -- better than IT created and managed on American soil -- by Americans [and Native Indians who've relocated here]?

5 Comments |  Add a Comment

Member Comments Total Comments: 5
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dannbetty read my blog view my photos
May 21, 2008 | 3:53 PM

Ask the real question. Wouldn't it be nice to talk to some one about a problem and be able to understand what they say is the solution?
I've called HP's technical assistance twice, no more.
Chickenkiller read my blog
May 22, 2008 | 12:27 AM

Answers:

1. Indian IT developed and managed in India by Indians is an inferior product. This is due more to culture than it is quality of the code.

2. Indian IT (code development) is superior to the US product provided that the overall system design is done in the US, and the coding requirements and supervision of the coders is done by Indians that have been located in the US.

I don't care how smart an Indian project manager is, but if he is from a lower caste than the person writing the code you're going to have big problems with the end result. Option 2 is going to cost you more money, but the result will be a superior product.
Jimmy-42 read my blog
May 23, 2008 | 1:48 PM

Chicken, I've been in IT for many years (decades) and have seen the results of many off shored projects. I pretty much agree with your answer number 1, but, disagree with your answer 2. The code developed in India is probably no better quality than developed in the US. The reason it may seem so is that the specifications for a program that is 'sent over seas' contain much more detail, every little detail is spelled out. Whereas specifications given to US programmers are usually vague, assuming that they have subject knowledge and can make decisions on their own. I'm sure that if a US programmer were given the same specifications as an off shore programmer, the resulting code would be of similar quality. The other side of this coin is that if I need to write such detailed specifications, why not write them in a structured, machine readable format? Then, we can get a computer to automatically generate the program.
Cheetah read my blog
May 24, 2008 | 5:47 PM

Dannbetty: yes, this is an issue -- and I have had it with HP also -- but in all fairness, the language barrier occurs here also.

Chicken: all of the IT folks whom I know are staunch advocates of your perspective, and one of these individuals is an Indian -- he's an American citizen working in an IT capacity for a Fortune 500 firm in StL, with offices in India.

Jimmy: yep, it makes sense -- inattention to detail and lack of precision in coding specifications certainly affect the results.

It would make an interesting double-blind study: give the same exact instructions to two IT teams -- one in America and one in India, and assess the quality of the end result.

Product and service quality is everything, especially for anything of value. And in these cases, quality must never be comprised. In my opinion IT is one of those things.

Too many, if not all, corporate executives make decisions based on cost -- and cost alone -- and often without any consideration whatsoever of what impact it will have on quality. If they took this in consideration -- and factored in all the future costs that are driven by poor quality products and services, including all makeovers and lost customers -- only a fool would make such a huge gamble.

Then again, just because a CEO makes millions of dollars and has an MBA, doesn't mean they're immune from being an idiot.
Chickenkiller read my blog
May 25, 2008 | 10:41 AM

Jimmy42 - I think that Cheetah summed it up pretty well. On my #2 suggestion, the reason I believe the code quality is better is that the testing is usually more thorough than what is typically done in the US. With the cost of the US IT structure, you would be hard pressed to be able to justify the degree of testing than can be performed in India for a lot less money.

Cheetah - you're dead on with the second half of your comments. If you are a consumer facing business, I would consider that IT is a key component of product and service differentiation from your competitors, and to throw the ability to do this away through outsourcing the complete IT process is a stupid decision.

Development however can be outsourced so long as the look and feel are managed by the Marketing types and the design and specification are maintained by onshore IT.

However when it comes to PC support through Dell, HP, and the other vendors, I go crazy. Fortunately I have numbers at Dell that get me US based level 2 support on the first call.
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