5 ms·

India’s Outsourcing Firms Change Direction as ‘Cloud’ Moves In

35 points by fspeech 11y ago

hliyan 11y ago
Paywalled. Says "To Read the Full Story, Subscribe or Sign In", but in reality, a subscription is necessary.
- guruparan18 11y ago
  Copy the URL, Google it, and click the link, it should open full article (see previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9531941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9531941 or read this: https://umur.io/paywall-bypass-bookmarklet-come-from-google/ https://umur.io/paywall-bypass-bookmarklet-come-from-google/). * Edit: Removed: "go to Google, Search", added: Google it. Aside: stupid me.
  - achow 11y ago
    For those who are interested in knowing about the working behind this Life Pro Tip - It works because of Google's 'First click free' arrangement with the newspapers. First click free: We've worked with subscription-based news services to arrange that the very first article seen by a Google News user (identifiable by referrer) doesn't require a subscription. Although this first article can be seen without subscribing, any further clicks on the article page will prompt the user to log-in or subscribe to the news site. https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543 https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543
- cies 11y ago
  Let's make it mandatory to put a [paywall] tag in cases like this.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- known 11y ago
  http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2015/07/13/under-a-cloud-outlook-for-indias-outsourcers-looks-gloomy/ http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2015/07/13/under-a-cloud-...
dkarapetyan 11y ago
The whole thing itself is kinda confused about what exactly the cloud has to do with outsourcing. Going to the cloud doesn't magically get rid of programmers. It just means you might have one or two fewer people because you don't need to worry about managing the actual hardware. Writing the software, maintaining it, patching it, etc. still needs to happen. Overall, more sensational than it really needs to be. The fact that Big Corp. is figuring out how to have a leaner IT operation is a good thing but they were bloated to begin with and are just catching up. Not really news to anyone who has seen those things.
- asadlionpk 11y ago
  I think cloud here means products like Freshbooks, basecamp, salesforce, etc. Big companies were previously outsourcing dev + support to these to Indian companies (and were bloated, also bad software, constant dev cycles fixing things) but are now turning towards these "0-programmer required" cloud apps. Which is essentially causing this decline.
  - dkarapetyan 11y ago
    Ok, that makes more sense. The article definitely misses the mark then.
  - thewarrior 11y ago
    50 % of Indian IT is not development but "infrastructure management" which is just monitoring servers etc. With all the infrastructure being outsourced to the cloud and being managed by super small teams and highly efficient algorithms half of the business of Indian IT has stopped growing. On the other hand you have companies like IPSoft which automate monitoring your own infrastructure. The third blow is from things like Salesforce etc. Altogether it could be a bit of a major blow to growth in Indian IT. Because it never really competed on technical strength but only on cost . Now all the low cost work is vanishing and they're forced to somehow transition to 100 % dev work with the poor quality of devs they have (on average) . The article is a bit poor as it doesn't shed light on these aspects. We definitely need better articles on this subject as it's effects on India are going to be huge.
honest_joe 11y ago
They do not change the direction they simply kill the jobs and have been doing this for decades (disclaimer i am not an american nor wester european and am in similar position of being a cheap eastern european workforce)
yask123 11y ago
To Read the Full Story, Subscribe or Sign In :\
- srikz 11y ago
  Do a google search of the tile and then click on that link to access the full article. Edit: Just saw that guruparan18 has already posted the solution
- L-four 11y ago
  Probably garbage anyways.
codeonfire 11y ago
Web-based services make it difficult to bilk customers because there is no way to increase costs. The rate is fixed ahead of time. The service either works or it doesn't. There is no possibility of hardware problems, software rework, configuration issues, overbilling, etc. There are no contract negotiation or lowball bidding games (and subsequent cost overruns) either because services are pay as you go. Outsourcers will have to either invent new corporate IT products that are not provided as services yet or build competing services.
- drcross 11y ago
  Network Engineers will rejoice at this. As the network becomes more depended upon QOS manipulation and failover link management comes to the fore.
  - abrookewood 11y ago
    Sorry, but I disagree - and my background is in networking. With AWS or Azure, no one cares about the network or servers. The only thing required is a decent link connecting you to the cloud and you are done. No one is going to hire network engineers to manage such a reduced portfolio.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      What office size? 10-50 people on a managed switch? Sure. Once you start talking larger corporate footprints, you have an entire local network to manage, gear throughout a campus, SLAs to meet for local users. Reduced portfolio. Hah!
      - abrookewood 11y ago
        Yeah, I was talking about small to medium sized offices. For large deployments, you'll still need network admins etc, but my point was simply that the general need for these skills is in decline.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
bluedino 11y ago
Managed service providers, Indian or not, will still offer to manage your cloud-based services for you. And IT managers will still pay them to. My last network admin job a couple years back had outsourced their email and spam filtering (two separate services, don't ask me why) to a local MSP. This made absolutely zero sense to me. Instead of simply logging into the web control panel of the respective service to add a new email address, check the spam filter for a message...instead you had to log into the MSP website and create a service ticket so they would do it, wait for a reply...
jiraaya 11y ago
I am not sure how much of actual "work" is going to vanish. My premise is that "work" is going to be relocated but not eliminated. Moving to cloud is not as easy as drag and drop. Netflix had to do plenty of re-work (and write a bunch of very cool tools along the way) to achieve it. The problem comes from legacy systems. They are very real and very slow moving. People do not want to alter them as that may involve re-tooling their entire ecosystem. If they do want to migrate to cloud (eventually), they would have to deal with all the additional complexity of a hybrid cloud eco-system. Where cloud is a huge win though is lowering the entry barrier for start-ups. More start-ups are getting more things done at lesser cost and lesser time than ever before. These are exciting times for innovation.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
known 11y ago
TCS/Wipro/Infosys are not selling software; They're selling 'software engineers' to US/UK clients;

35 points by fspeech 11y ago

hliyan 11y ago

Paywalled. Says "To Read the Full Story, Subscribe or Sign In", but in reality, a subscription is necessary.

guruparan18 11y ago
Copy the URL, Google it, and click the link, it should open full article (see previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9531941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9531941 or read this: https://umur.io/paywall-bypass-bookmarklet-come-from-google/ https://umur.io/paywall-bypass-bookmarklet-come-from-google/). * Edit: Removed: "go to Google, Search", added: Google it. Aside: stupid me.
- achow 11y ago
  For those who are interested in knowing about the working behind this Life Pro Tip - It works because of Google's 'First click free' arrangement with the newspapers. First click free: We've worked with subscription-based news services to arrange that the very first article seen by a Google News user (identifiable by referrer) doesn't require a subscription. Although this first article can be seen without subscribing, any further clicks on the article page will prompt the user to log-in or subscribe to the news site. https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543 https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543
cies 11y ago
Let's make it mandatory to put a [paywall] tag in cases like this.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
known 11y ago
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2015/07/13/under-a-cloud-outlook-for-indias-outsourcers-looks-gloomy/ http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2015/07/13/under-a-cloud-...

dkarapetyan 11y ago

The whole thing itself is kinda confused about what exactly the cloud has to do with outsourcing. Going to the cloud doesn't magically get rid of programmers. It just means you might have one or two fewer people because you don't need to worry about managing the actual hardware. Writing the software, maintaining it, patching it, etc. still needs to happen. Overall, more sensational than it really needs to be. The fact that Big Corp. is figuring out how to have a leaner IT operation is a good thing but they were bloated to begin with and are just catching up. Not really news to anyone who has seen those things.

asadlionpk 11y ago
I think cloud here means products like Freshbooks, basecamp, salesforce, etc. Big companies were previously outsourcing dev + support to these to Indian companies (and were bloated, also bad software, constant dev cycles fixing things) but are now turning towards these "0-programmer required" cloud apps. Which is essentially causing this decline.
- dkarapetyan 11y ago
  Ok, that makes more sense. The article definitely misses the mark then.
- thewarrior 11y ago
  50 % of Indian IT is not development but "infrastructure management" which is just monitoring servers etc. With all the infrastructure being outsourced to the cloud and being managed by super small teams and highly efficient algorithms half of the business of Indian IT has stopped growing. On the other hand you have companies like IPSoft which automate monitoring your own infrastructure. The third blow is from things like Salesforce etc. Altogether it could be a bit of a major blow to growth in Indian IT. Because it never really competed on technical strength but only on cost . Now all the low cost work is vanishing and they're forced to somehow transition to 100 % dev work with the poor quality of devs they have (on average) . The article is a bit poor as it doesn't shed light on these aspects. We definitely need better articles on this subject as it's effects on India are going to be huge.

honest_joe 11y ago

They do not change the direction they simply kill the jobs and have been doing this for decades (disclaimer i am not an american nor wester european and am in similar position of being a cheap eastern european workforce)

yask123 11y ago

To Read the Full Story, Subscribe or Sign In :\

srikz 11y ago
Do a google search of the tile and then click on that link to access the full article. Edit: Just saw that guruparan18 has already posted the solution
L-four 11y ago
Probably garbage anyways.

codeonfire 11y ago

Web-based services make it difficult to bilk customers because there is no way to increase costs. The rate is fixed ahead of time. The service either works or it doesn't. There is no possibility of hardware problems, software rework, configuration issues, overbilling, etc. There are no contract negotiation or lowball bidding games (and subsequent cost overruns) either because services are pay as you go. Outsourcers will have to either invent new corporate IT products that are not provided as services yet or build competing services.

drcross 11y ago
Network Engineers will rejoice at this. As the network becomes more depended upon QOS manipulation and failover link management comes to the fore.
- abrookewood 11y ago
  Sorry, but I disagree - and my background is in networking. With AWS or Azure, no one cares about the network or servers. The only thing required is a decent link connecting you to the cloud and you are done. No one is going to hire network engineers to manage such a reduced portfolio.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    What office size? 10-50 people on a managed switch? Sure. Once you start talking larger corporate footprints, you have an entire local network to manage, gear throughout a campus, SLAs to meet for local users. Reduced portfolio. Hah!
    - abrookewood 11y ago
      Yeah, I was talking about small to medium sized offices. For large deployments, you'll still need network admins etc, but my point was simply that the general need for these skills is in decline.
- Spooky23 11y ago

bluedino 11y ago

Managed service providers, Indian or not, will still offer to manage your cloud-based services for you. And IT managers will still pay them to. My last network admin job a couple years back had outsourced their email and spam filtering (two separate services, don't ask me why) to a local MSP. This made absolutely zero sense to me. Instead of simply logging into the web control panel of the respective service to add a new email address, check the spam filter for a message...instead you had to log into the MSP website and create a service ticket so they would do it, wait for a reply...

jiraaya 11y ago

I am not sure how much of actual "work" is going to vanish. My premise is that "work" is going to be relocated but not eliminated. Moving to cloud is not as easy as drag and drop. Netflix had to do plenty of re-work (and write a bunch of very cool tools along the way) to achieve it. The problem comes from legacy systems. They are very real and very slow moving. People do not want to alter them as that may involve re-tooling their entire ecosystem. If they do want to migrate to cloud (eventually), they would have to deal with all the additional complexity of a hybrid cloud eco-system. Where cloud is a huge win though is lowering the entry barrier for start-ups. More start-ups are getting more things done at lesser cost and lesser time than ever before. These are exciting times for innovation.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

known 11y ago

TCS/Wipro/Infosys are not selling software; They're selling 'software engineers' to US/UK clients;