During the past decade
software development outsourcing has become a widespread business activity and
a software consulting firm in
India is far better positioned to get a business contract from abroad and
for good reasons. Global economic downturn has played a role in India's
emergence as leading world provider of software development services within
outsourced projects but other factors like government-backed investments in
appropriate infrastructure and education have been the major drivers of such a
development.
India inherited a relatively well developed educational
system based on a British system that has a proven record in the course of centuries.
The country managed to expand its reach nationwide and meanwhile created a
number of technological educational centers that served as the stepping stone
for development of modern research and development centers in the field of
software and hardware engineering. Later on, India invested heavily in modern
infrastructure required to maintain those facilities and attract foreign
investors interested in outsourcing in part or in whole their software
development and software support services abroad.
In the course of a couple
of decades, software consulting companies
in India gained enough professional experience to compete on equal terms with
counterparts in leading technological nations in the West, backed also by the
rapid expansion of local software development industry and the growth of
India's economy as a whole. As the number of outsourced projects grew, local
software consultancies gained not only valuable experience but got access to
cutting edge technologies that are rarely accessible even to leading Western
software consultants. Within a few years major world software vendors and
hardware manufacturers set foot in India through local consulting
firms or through direct investment in regional research and development
facilities which hire local software experts. A good number of software
professionals later moved to locally-owned software companies or established
new software consulting firms that possess both the required professional
know-how and cheaper labor resource to provide extremely competitive service.
India's software consulting firms are much better
positioned when it comes to payroll expenses due to some specifics of the
country's economy which provides great opportunities for career development of
locally-grown software expenses but still can offer more affordable services in
terms of labor costs involved in a technological project. Local software
consultancies have been forced to increase remunerations due to prevent
brain-drain of well-trained experts but are still able to prevent India-educated
software engineers and consultants from fleeing the country, while providing
decent standard of living to them.
Local companies involved
in computer hardware and software industry have enjoyed a stable rate of growth
for more than a decade, a growth rate much higher than the industry average
across the world, thus they piled significant strategic financial reserve that
can be used for further service enhancement and strategic investments in
infrastructure development and continuous employee training programs. During a
very short period of only a few years, foreign-educated Indian software experts
started to flow back to India, attracted by markedly improved work environment,
more lucrative remuneration packages, and last but not least possibility to
work on complex projects that involve latest technological developments in the
field of hardware and software research.
That said, a software
consulting firm in India is better positioned to attract projects from
abroad compared with peers in the region or any other country in the world. In
fact, a software consulting firm in India can afford to lower the price
of its service without sacrificing quality, backed by a combination of
strategic reserves piled in the past and smart investment in locally-grown
experts who are well-prepared to provide world class service to customers at
home and abroad.
