Indian Firms Take Aim at Infrastructure Management
Sramana Mitra recently wrote one of the most ridiculous articles I’ve read in a long time over in Forbes magazine. In it, she claims that India’s outsourced IT Services industry faces a “coming death” as Indian wages rise and IT service firms in areas like Eastern Europe or “Oklahoma” become more appealing. Huh?
Meanwhile, back on planet earth, Indian technology firms are finally expanding beyond software development and taking aim at US-based infrastructure management services with the promise of lower-cost, remote administration. When you consider that 70-75% of infrastructure management can be done remotely (CIO Magazine, March 2008), this market is a potential goldmine for Indian firms.
Over the next five years, these Indian companies will turn infrastructure management into a kind of commodity. Just as an organization pays their electric bill every month, they will dutifully dispatch a check to India to keep their network running.
And these services will not be moving to Eastern Europe, which has neither the people, capital, nor experience to compete with India on any meaningful level at this point. All that outsourced software experience gives India an insurmountable head start.
This is bad news for US based infrastructure management firms and system/network administrators, but good news for IT Project Managers who will be tapped to manage these transitions and their inherit risks. Expect security and disaster recovery issues to be at the forefront.
