It's the Time to Offshore!

The internal development machine of Cisco has so far been involved in
development and deployment of critical applications. Now is the time for further
offshore work

To
support the internal IT requirements, the business applications, the
infrastructure, and technology that run Cisco, the company had set up its first
IT Global Development Center (ITGDC) in Bangalore in 2004. Almost a year after,
it claims to have paved the way for further offshoring, as the center now looks
to increase the scope of work-move from build and operate to optimize and
innovate phase.

It is therefore looking
at ramping up, from its current manpower strength of 200 to almost doubling that
number in the next two years. ITGDC's first head, senior managing director
Ushasri TS said this is an important investment for Cisco and there are a lot of
expectations, especially with regard to productivity improvement. She has gone
about building it in a structured manner. Initially, it worked with each of
Cisco's business IT groups who are looking at leveraging India-that was the
build phase. Now these groups are looking at value. “We have a three pillar
kind of a strategy. In one-two years time-frame, there will be significant
capability in GDC India,” she says.

The three pillars are
development factory, strategic sourcing, and flex services. As the development
factory matures, both core and contextual application development work that can
be done remotely without sacrificing business efficiencies will be transitioned
to the India IT GDC. While core work remains within the company, more of the
contextual work is outsourced to strategic partners with whom the company has
established long-term relationships.

The sourcing strategy
spells out partners by specialization, enabling smooth and efficient operations.
The ITGDC in India works extensively with most established vendors in the
industry to execute global initiatives. The third pillar on which the center is
built, encompasses the various shadow IT services such as Web production
services and office tools services that the operations require, whether in IT or
in other parts of the business. These services are provided through specific
specialized vendors consequently providing the business an opportunity to cater
to ad hoc requirements in a streamlined fashion.

The vision, according
to IT GDC India chief, is to ensure that the center is recognized for innovation
and process excellence in IT solution delivery and application life cycle
management. A second ITGDC is coming up in North Carolina. There is no decision
yet on how work will be split between the two, but the Bangalore center will be
the biggest.

Goutam Das in Bangalore  

goutamd@cybermedia.co.in