The SOA-ring Services Opportunities

Traveling through the US and interacting with clients, friends, and family at

the end of spring, I was struck by how much is changing and yet, how much is

still the same. Propensity to spend-on cars, good food, vacations, and on

just, any new thing, is still the same all over the US. This probably underlines

the fact that the burgeoning US deficit, which seems to cause more worry to

economists than the free-spending average American, continues to be America's

gift to the economies of China and India.

Our Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh was right in cautioning Asian economies

at the recent meeting of the ADB in Hyderabad that they should invest more in

their own infrastructure and economy than in buying US securities. But this is

not immediately actionable because of the virtuous cycle that Asian funding of

the US consumption pattern tends to have on the GDP of Asia's economies. If

American consumers stopped or slowed spending on cars, toys, and clothes, would

China really continue to be the manufacturing juggernaut it is? And if American

companies caught the savings flu and stopped building new applications and

processes, would that puncture the enthusiasm to outsource that continues to

drive Indian IT and BPO?

 Interestingly enough, no fewer

luminaries than Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley chief, believes India is making

progress in balancing its sources of economic growth better than elsewhere in

Asia. He sees growing support from internal demand, especially private

consumption. The FDI constraint is still serious and savings shortfalls relative

to China is still an issue, but Stephen believes that there is significant

progress being made here as well as on infrastructure creation, with

construction activity in full swing all over the country.

No wonder then that corporate enthusiasm for offshore outsourcing is at its

strongest all over the US. The relative challenges continue to exist-for IBM,

EDS, and Accenture to demonstrate a true India capability, for the billion

dollar IT services firms and the larger BPOs to develop levels of process

understanding that rivals their 'born in the US' competitors and of course

for smaller firms to demonstrate that customer focus, process flexibility, and

innovation are more prevalent lower down the pyramid, than at the top.

With the increasing focus on IT and BPO capability integration and the rapid

adoption of new services such as Business Intelligence and Information

Architecture Consulting on one hand, and Infrastructure Management capabilities

on the other, the services portfolio of most of the top thirty Indian firms are

getting wider and deeper all the time.

One of the biggest opportunities today for all Indian software firms to

demonstrate their ability to move up the value chain is consulting around the

development of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) for clients. Very similar

to the evolution of Knowledge Management, from a coffee table discussion topic

to a real living enabling architecture for companies they are willing to

reengineer processes, rethink top management involvement, re-configure

technology, and re-orient organization culture to move towards Knowledge

Management maturity. The organic development of SOA in a client organization

needs balanced skills in Consulting, Business Process Management and an

understanding of the myriad SOA tools that are becoming available everyday.

Many Indian firms have floundered with traditional SDLC waterfall approach

transition to the brave new world of prototyping and extreme agile programming,

and in the building block approach to SOA the danger of getting in, out of your

depth is very real. But most of the better Indian firms will climb this mountain

and use SOA as an exciting new platform to launch into consulting.

 It is the focus on job creation,

which today Indian IT and BPO are providing, that can present the real

opportunities for balanced growth in the years to come.