Managing Offshore IT

Here is a bit of blatant self promotion: I have been ideating on a few topics around sourcing, offshoring management and leveraging globalized teams to foster innovation.

The first paper was published in the March 2007 issue of Cutter IT Journal focused on “The IT Innovation Process: Necessity or Oxymoron?”  Guest Editor, Claude R. Baudoin, introduces our paper as:

We start with San Murugesan and Mohan Babu K, who look at the shortcomings of the "closed" or internal innovation model and at the culture change required to embrace "open" innovation. Innovative ideas, they suggest, are everywhere: "The Internet and Web, blogs, wikis, and social computing and networking [help] to tap the potential of the world's growing reservoir of human creativity and innovation capabilities." Furthermore, the authors report how some companies that formerly kept tight control over their proprietary IP are now deriving significant financial, strategic, and competitive benefits from the strategic licensing of even core technologies, ideas, and applications. They outline a number of different strategies organizations can use to take advantage of these global capabilities for innovation, placing particular emphasis on the Center of Excellence (COE) model. They present a case study of a real-world COE and conclude the article with some helpful recommendations for harnessing innovation in your own organization.

The second is a more detailed Executive Report [Part of Cutter’s Sourcing & Vendor Relationships Resource series]  titled “Offshoring IT: Making It a Success” Cutter introduces the topic as:
Enterprises are now offshoring many of their IT activities, and this looks to be a trend that will continue. Though offshoring has become a critical component of many businesses and has several benefits, it also poses additional challenges and risks, and achieving success in offshoring is not automatic. This Executive Report presents considerations, strategies, and practices that will help you make your IT offshoring activities a success.

Readers who have access to Cutter research are invited to peruse these reports. You may also ping me directly on this blog or by mail to ideate further… especially around leveraging Offshoring for Innovation, establishing Centers of Excellence (CoE) with global sourcing partners etc.

Footnote: The ideas were firmed up during my interactions with Prof. San Murugesan, who has also been a guest contributor to this blog, and a co-author in the papers.

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A colleague forwarded a recent article in SDA where, Jeremy Lock, IT Manager at British Energy Power & Energy Trading (BEPET) was quoted saying “Infosys opened our eyes to what was possible and what are the implications of an SOA environment.”  On a similar thread, a few weeks ago, I was exchanging notes with Prashanth, who had blogged about “IT Vendor of the Year - Infosys , By Wachovia.” He mailed me back on my comment stating there is a bigger story behind such awards in the media; there is a lot of 'blood and sweat' that goes behind the scenes prior to such accolades coming one's way. His question was thought provoking … to which I still don’t have an answer. He asked:

But here is a thought, lot of teams / orgs have teams that work hard but what or how is an award winning distinguished?
Let's not mention generic factors like process etc, let's try to be more specific, your thoughts?

Of course, to reflect on such a topic would require a detailed analysis of the ‘business of software services’ and/or ‘business of offshoring,’ which I don’t intend to do in this blog. [Recall my earlier blog with debates on ‘domain knowledge’?] The reason I borrowed the title for this blog from Jim Collins’s best seller is not because it was required reading when I was in B-school; I was hoping to refresh my memory on the theme of the book that may give some clues.

However, the Million $/Euro or  Rupee question remains : Is it the processes, the people, the ‘business environment,’ technical edge or a combination of these that takes one from being Good ... to Great?

Footnote: It must be the awards season; not just for Infosys … even for other top offshore vendors [Wipro BPO Sweeps IQPC's 2007 Global Excellence Awards]

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 03:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Continuing my post on Open Source and Offshoring from a few weeks ago, I came across an interesting article in Dr. Dobb’s “Open-Source Globalization” In the article, Christof talks about how open-source globalization is more of an agent for increased specialization, which is usually a path to higher incomes. Christof adds "most software engineers embrace open source—not surprising, given that it was they who started the movement in the first place." and articulates some major benefits for engineers:

• Open source is a career builder. You don't need to be an MIT graduate to join key IT projects.
• Globalization also brings global opportunities to you. Why not work on a movie animation project in New Zealand?
• There is a looser affiliation to a project. Being less locked-in with your current employer creates a better "market" for your services.
• Empowerment, values, and fun. Open-source projects recruit their contributors and then get out of their way.

Tech companies have embarked on their internal open-source movements which are also getting externalized. IBM'S open source is a case in point. Microsoft too has been pushing into the open-source world albeit positioning its toolkits [Gotdotnet]

For managers at software service firms, an open-source culture is also a ‘tool’ to motivate technically inclined employees. Well, I uttered the B word, didn’t I? Fact of the matte is that most service firms consciously decide to keep a certain percentage of staff on bench to enable organization to service the pipeline of clients. The challenges is not just maintaining a ‘bench’ but ensuring that those on bench sharpen their skills and are motivated. For instance, at Infosys we have several collaborative models including an internal knowledge-sharing portal (kshop) internal, discussion forums, mailing lists, blogs and other forums mimicking a Web 2.0 in the internal environment. Interestingly, an internal ‘sourceforge,’ similar to its open-world cousin, has been in existence for a while where employees can sign-up for virtual projects and collaborate. This ecosystem is especially useful to motivate those on ‘bench’

Motivating those on bench to participate in internal (and external?) open source communities is certainly a win-win proposition for service delivery firms.

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

For employees reporting to a CIO – program leaders, managers and enterprise architects – the implication is clear: they too need to change the way they view their roles from that of just technologists to technology enablers.

The implication of this to software service providers is also interesting since CIOs expect them to take on dual roles : become ‘trusted advisors’ while also taking over some of the day-to-day operational challenges. This is perhaps the thought being echoed by my colleague Sandeep in his Flat World Blog entry too. In a sense, consultants from service firms have an added responsibility of providing CIOs with the external perspective without having to deal with the internal dynamics of her/his organization.

There is a softer dimension to this too. just like the rest of us, CIOs also have career goals and aspirations. In an interesting CIO magazine article, Martha Heller attempts to address the query of what does the future hold for these IT leaders? Stating “Some will maintain their CIO title and progress to larger and more complex organizations. Others will move across the enterprise and into the business. A handful will push the boundaries of what it means to be a CIO."

Astute CIOs know the value of leveraging the best ideas internally and externally, especially if the ideas can benefit their organizations (and them). Understanding and empathizing with the CIOs goals and ensuing that they meet them is perhaps a key to success of a consultant

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

These days anything with a ‘services’ moniker sells….and not surprisingly we are hearing a lot more on SaaS : Software as a Service.

Charlie Bess in the EDS blog muses “Will 2007 be the year of SaaS?” The new moniker certainly has its followers. Martin Langedijk writes
“We all have been taught by our parents from a young age that sharing is a good thing! Software as a Service (SaaS) is based on the principle of sharing; in this case the sharing of resources, computer hardware, knowledge and most importantly the sharing of cost.“

Flavors of SaaS has been around the industry as far back as we can remember, with a couple of trends firming up over the past few years:
Application service provider (ASP) : A licensing fee and a monthly fee are separate and are paid to the maker of the software and to the hoster of the software.
Software on-demand : In software-on-demand type of hosting, there is no division between licensing and hosting fees, and there is little or no customization of software for customers.

I was exchanging notes on this topic with a few peers at Infosys on this, and Freddi Gyara wrote back:
I’ll take the liberty to indulge in some personal examples – In ’97, I worked on some programs for a company for Dendrite. They provide a CRM (the term wasn’t coined as yet) solution specifically for Pharmas. They host the entire server infrastructure (and in those days banks of modems) and undertake the installations of management of fat clients. They used to call it “managed software” in those days.

Similarly, Srinivas J. takes a developer view on SaaS to explore what it would mean:
More than ever the interface to service becomes critical. OO-SOA-SaaS the stress on proper interfaces increases. Since so far in core business areas this has been our Achilles heel in most projects, now more than ever design of interfaces becomes critical. Teams will need good functional members who can abstract the functionality enough for architects/designers to create interfaces or more likely the architects will need to understand functionality deep enough to abstract them.
He also muses that with SaaS, Frameworks would mature to a point where varied deployment modes can be done in a non intrusive way. 

Now, Managed software has been around for a while, right?  So, what is all the hoopla over SaaS?

. . . Unless we decided to add offshoring as a twist. Software services – development, maintenance, testing etc – continues to move offshore. And if Software is being viewed as a services, what about Offshoring Software Services…

Well, we just would have to come up with another acronym for this, right?

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 08:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I periodically receive mails from peers in the IT industry - predominantly from those in software service firms - asking for tips on pre-sales. Some are in response to an old viewpoint of mine published in Express Computers and on this blog. The queries fall into two broad categories:

• How do I respond to pre-sales queries more effectively .. or what are the tools and tips available. I had blogged a few thoughts on this earlier, so will not address the topic in this blog.
• Many writers are curious to know if Pre Sales role is a ‘career move.’
• The third topic / query around pre-sales is around hosting offshore-visits by clients and prospects

To the query on pre-sales as a career-move,  my response is: Yes, it is definitely a career move especially since one acquires unique skills by participating on client calls, responding to proposals and requests. Over a period, one begins to appreciate what their (client's) need/requirements are. After all a successful proposal (or winning bid) echoes a response to a business/technical problem that you will help solve.

In the software services ‘business,’ most of what we do is targeted at satisfying the requirements of clients. …and as you move up the ladder in a service delivery organization, the skills in responding to client queries are especially valuable. 

Another topic around pre-sales is that of hosting ‘Offshore visit’ by client teams and stakeholders. A variation of such client visit is the India-Study-Trip hosted by many western universities for their MBA and technology management students.  On this topic, it was interesting to read "Calendar Tips to Make Your Offshore Visits Productive" in the recent CIO magazine feature

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my earlier blog I had talked about the increasing significance of Offshoring Managers

Another article on the same theme - Outsourcing pros step up - caught my attention, this time quoting academicians who are spearheading courses and training programs around Offshoring Management.

Prof. Christine Bullen of Stevens Institute of Technology, who was quoted in the article is anchoring a survey, details of which follow. If interested, you may contact her directly. 

Short description in Prof. Bullen’s words:

This project is sponsored by the Society for Information Management, which is an association of CIOs and academic researchers and we have a team of academics from U.S. Europe and Australia who are cooperating to gather the data.

We carried out the first phase surveying "client" companies and are now in the second phase of looking at service providers. We are getting data from companies all over the world. In general only one person needs to do the survey, which takes 10-15 minutes on line. However for global organizations where their workforce strategy may be different in different regions, we are getting regional responses. Ideally the respondent either has the responsibility of hiring and developing the workforce or knows the corporate plan for developing the workforce.

All participants in this research are anonymous; all data will be reported as aggregates so that no single organization could be identified.

Thanks,
---Chris
 
Christine V. Bullen
Professor
Howe School of Technology Management
Stevens Institute of Technology
cbullen@stevens.edu
cbullen@optonline.net

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)