The Future Of Indian Software

Hmmm...Most pundits (and managers , Software engineers and students) agree that India built up its software industry by using its most potent strength against a price-consious west -- Cheap labour.
But increasingly India's software industry has stopped clamouring about its cost-effectiveness (which everyone has come to understand, and respect) and is positioning itself on quality.
Most Indian firms routinely get CMM Level 5 certified. This is a rarity even in Silicon Valley,where Level 5 is relatively rare.
Indian software indutry has also reached scale.With TCS,Wipro and Infosys tipping 40000 employees and poised on 50000, they are really getting in there with the biggies worldwide.Mass hiring is quite the norm,with these three and companies Satyam ,Patni,IBM and Cognizant hiring incessantly to meet their huge manpower requirements.

My thoughts on the future..Purely my own..Agreements /Disagreements welcome

1.How long can India hold on to its No1 position in Software?
For the next 10-15 years, we can compete on our cost and headstart gained..However with cheaper destinations like Pakistan,Thailand,Russia and China catching up and cutting even our prices down and Our own manpower costs spiralling up (Salaries are raised 15-20% a year in an attempt by companies to keep talent and control attrition) we may not be able to ride the price wave too long...
We then focus on Quality.India is already onto this.Companies are getting CMM certified.Engineers are gaining technology degrees and Interational certifications.Processes are finetuned and quality tightened across the company.It will be long before anyone (including the Americans can beat us on this)
Finally we move up the value chain....Focus on consulting and high end services.Infosys has its consulting arm in place and most firms are taking baby steps in this direction.An Indian firm providing end-to-end solutions at high quality and at cheap prices will be a world-beater.
India's numero uno position is safe in the future (20-30 years min)


2.With scale, Can we keep up the quality standards of "Made in india" Software ?
This is a big challenge. Indian software firms have coped with the quality angle by building entire training centres which churn out an army of coders on demand for the firm (See post on Infosys training center)
With such levels of maturity,my guess is that we can

3.When is the crash of 2001 visiting again?
The burnt child dreads the fire.Weve learnt from our mistakes. The days of blind VCing and fancy Dot-Coms are over.Every company worth its name has enough money in reserve to keep its staff cooling their heels for a couple of years at least. The days of pink-slipping and benching are unlikely to happen on the 2001 scale ever again,simply because companies are more careful about hiring now.
The next crash hopefully should'nt happen.

4. Can India Companies ever do "Cutting Edge Work" ?
Indian companies still depend on testing/maintenance/application development for bulk of their revenues.Indian companies have slowly started moving into R&D and innovation but I dont see a Google,Yahoo or EBay popping out of India ,anytime soon.But we are getting there.

5. Careers in Software.
An amazing roller coaster ride. But onsite ops,sexed up salaries and rapid climbs up management are going to be tougher to get as the pyramid in every firm grows broader and broader, and competition within the firm intensifies.

6. Software cities of the future.
To ride the cost benefit, companies will follow the low cost engineers.
Current leaders -Bangalore,Delhi,Chennai,Hyderabad
Current Contenders - Mumbai,NOIDA,Kolkata,Thiruvanathapuram,Pune
The Future- Bhubhaneshwar, Trichy,Nagpur, Kochi,Mysore, Mangalore,DehraDun,
Jaipur and Lucknow