(By Anthony Miller – Tuesday 18th August 2009 9:30am). An interview in today’s FT with Infosys CEO, Kris Gopalakrishnan, shows that India-based SIs are struggling to come to terms with cloud computing as much as the rest of the industry: “The slowdown has forced companies to look at cloud computing seriously ... it is a change that is happening and if we are not adapting to that change we may get caught out.”The provision of cloud computing services could pose a bigger problem for India-based outsourcers than the ‘usual suspect’ global/European players as their outsourcing proposition is traditionally ‘asset light’, i.e. as a rule, they generally don’t take on customers’ data centres – they just manage them remotely from India. A couple of the Indian players are starting to move away from this a little, with Wipro buying US outsourcer Infocrossing (Ifox) a couple of years ago, and more recently, HCL buying a US customer’s data centre (more on this in the next OffshoreViews quarterly review).
Although Gopalakrishnan believes the primary role for India-based SIs in the cloud world is as an integrator (makes sense to me) he also mooted an opportunity to provide cloud services to the mid-market. Now statements like that send a shiver down my spine, as just about everyone knows IT services ‘Rule 101’ that the business model and financial model to serve the mid-market is fundamentally different than that for large enterprises, so I hope Infosys thinks really hard about this before taking the plunge. Mind you, his definition of mid-market refers to companies with revenues over $5b!
Nonetheless, I have generally found the India-based players tend to be ahead of the game in IT services delivery and doubtless they have their best minds with their heads in the cloud, so to speak. But this is one area where I suspect the view is as murky for them as it is for the rest of us.
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