Thinking About India

Brian Valentine

Senior VP Windows Division

Microsoft Corp.

Times Are Changing…

• The World Gets Smaller Everyday– 60% of Microsoft products are sold outside the US

• You need to ‘think global’ across the board– Today we develop locally and market globally– The next step is Global Delivery: developing and

marketing our technologies everywhere

• You CAN do it outside of Redmond– Trying to do it all on campus just doesn’t scale– Outsourcing is not just for non-critical work– Redmond is not the center of the universe

Infosys Development Center, IndiaInfosys Development Center, India

Going Global Gets You Development Leverage

• Reduced time to market– Distributing your developers across multiple time zones

– Extend the effective work-day to about 16-18 hours

• Opportunity for FTEs to focus on core activities– Shift non-core and low-risk tasks out of Microsoft

– Frees Microsoft resources to focus on maintaining the technology edge

• Lower cost of ownership– Reduce total project time with resource scale-out

– Leverage the Indian economy’s lower cost structure

• Flexibility with resource loading– Virtually any technical resource can be had

– Easily add and subtract resources for ramp-ups and ramp-downs

Satyam Development Center, IndiaSatyam Development Center, India

Why Think About India Now

• Large and technically qualified talent pool– 450,000 software engineers (+ 70k each year)

• Quality work at 50-60% of the cost– That’s 2 heads for the price of 1

• IP protection policies are built into the model– Preferred India vendors are source licensed

• Secure physical & network resources– Project teams are 100% dedicated– Secured physical and network resources

• Flexible contractor terms– Very short engagements, remote or on-site

• Exploitable time zone advantage– Check in code tonight and it’s tested by morning

TCS Development Center, IndiaTCS Development Center, India

Call To Action• Ask yourself some hard questions:

– Did you get the headcount you needed?– What did you pay for CSGs last year?– What if you could double your talent/$?

• Look at your short-term project list– Pick something to move off-shore today

• Look at your long-term project list– What has the biggest CSG budget?– Evaluate the cost advantage of adding

off-shore talent• Look at your talent pool

– Where do you need more depth/breadth?

WIPRO Development Center, IndiaWIPRO Development Center, India