|
The IT industry has been the face of the Indian growth story. As time has passed, we have seen newer avenues opening up. The Indian IT industry has been constantly innovating to maintain its edge over the world. Global Delivery model was the first innovation that put India on the forefront. But now, competition has increased, and the profits are being squeezed.
The software service companies have shifted their focus from pure sales to relationship development. The Indian companies like to be called "equal partners" in their bid to work for clients. They are ready to anticipate and adapt to the changing nature of business.
The software companies can be classified into two.
The software providers who create niche software products catering to various verticals. The others are software vendors who provide software services to the client, on software products owned by software providers.
For a typical software creator, it makes more business sense to sell licenses than to maintain the applications. By maintenance, I do not mean, they are shirking from their responsibilities to resolve software bugs, but a number of times the application suffers because of implementation issues. For e.g. SAP delivers high end ERP solutions, but it does not reveal the code to its clients. But in case, the client requires some specific changes not allowed by the by the basic version, the client can request, to get the code for that particular object. The client does have to pay for this access right.
The software vendors come into picture because the owners of software do not want to get into, maintenance of the software, which is highly repeatable and is not much lucrative.
Partners from Pre-Sales
stage
This new model forges alliances between the software providers and the software service vendors. The companies join hands in creating business opportunities. Earlier, the sales teams of software providers and vendors used to work separately to win bids from the same client. Now, both of them work together to increase their probability of getting a contract. For e.g. if TCS joins hands with SAP, then there is higher probability that if SAP gets the contract then TCS will follow soon. This has resulted in a number of alliances whereby companies work together.
NASSCOM's strategic review of IT industry 2007 points out that the Industry is on the right track of growth and is all set to reach its targeted growth of USD 50 billion by 2008. But for this growth rate to be sustainable, Indian software services companies will have to innovate and restructure their business philosophies.
 |
Verticals 
