A Springboard To Services

I have for a long time held the view that the most competitive markets for IT services in the world are the UK, Australia and Canada. This is due to the presence of most MNC service providers as well as locally produced providers of note. From my point of view the baton has changed and now India has the perhaps dubious honour of being the most competitive market. This is a direct result of course of offshoring. Not only does every vendor of note have a presence in India for global delivery, but of course it is the home of the Indian based providers such as Infosys and Wipro. The reason for the acceleration in competitive pressure is that all are focusing now on local leverage to the Indian market, from Infosys to Cap Gemini.
The benefits of this increased competition are clear, innovation of solution and relatively reasonable pricing for end users should be a clear outcome. However it is important to note that not all vendors will survive, the market is not big enough from a services point of view to enable that to happen.

As many would be aware, there have been some terrible terrorist impacts around the world in recent days from Turkey to India. In India there were two locations including Bangalore, clearly Bangalore is a topical target with the level of affluence and foreign investment. Having literally been in the city the week prior it is important to focus that it will not diminish the role of Bangalore to develop India and the local economy, and it will be a temporay blip for the local IT market. It does place added emphasis on Business Continuity services and ensure that providers are able to communicate with clients how they can manage around tragic and difficult outcomes.

Business Objects was by far the market leader in India in the BI space following its acquisition of Crystal Decisions for $820 million. Currently, SAP has about 1,400 customers in India, accounting for about 3% of SAP Global's customer base. With this acquisition, SAP will leverage Business Object’s expertise in BI space to boost its customer base, especially in the SME space – the primary focus of SAP in India. With industries like retail, banking and insurance, and manufacturing booming in India, SAP’s strengthening of its product portfolio in the BI space will obviously give it greater advantage over its rivals.  Many of SAP’s target industries in India are also big potential users of BI- so this acquisition can help fuel this industry strategy while also erasing doubts about SAP’s Business Intelligence capabilities.