Saturday, July 31, 2004

[news] Cognizant & the "Intelligent Internet" + a Peek at 2005 IT Budgets (Part 1 of 2)

Thursday, July 29, 2004
Dateline: China
 
In a rush to catch a flight, so I'll make this brief.
 
The subject of this message sounds like there might be some sort of causal relationship between Cognizant and Internet futures, but I'm really referring to two separate issues (and two different articles).  Although the article which is the basis for my Cognizant spin made my secondary urls listing in my last posting, it's worth reconsidering, especially for their take on China.
 
The article on Infosys was a Q&A session with one of their senior execs, Francisco D'Souza (see http://tinyurl.com/3lpyu ).  Some of the more interesting points (in no particular order):  For one thing, Cognizant invests about 25-26% in SG&A, almost twice that of their competitors.  (As a marketing and bizdev guy, kudos to Cognizant for their foresight!)  "This has helped us (i.e., Cognizant) build a formidable sales and marketing infrastructure and invest in local practice leaders, client partners, relationship managers and so on."  They also took an early lead in verticalization, "which is another reason for richer customer experience."  A key issue, of course, is that Cognizant has already started its expansion outside India into other low-cost locations like China.  Kudos again!  (They have a foray into Europe, but it's minor:  They also view the "Golden Triangle" as the best strategy.)  They also believe that it will be "quite normal" for them to be delivering to customers from multiple locations in the world.
 
Here's a great quote (I guess neoIT didn't see it):  "The initial feedback is that clients are interested in piloting work in China.  Our experience on the ground in China is that we've been able to find talented individuals with reasonable English-language capabilities."  Another comment (playing off my "Golden Triangle" theme):  "Currently, only India and China represent the potential to scale up volumes.  This may well continue for another decade." 
 
On a related note, an exec (K.S. Suryaprakash) with Infosys was recently quoted as saying, "China is the only country which can offer cost scales comparable to India."  In their Shanghai operation, they have "seven or eight Indians" among their staff of 25 -- and they use Donald Duck posters to help teach English!  See http://tinyurl.com/5wyga .
 
Sorry, but I really tried to include the "Intelligent Internet" and the 2005 IT budgets sneak preview in this posting; alas, I'll complete this in Dalian.  Got to run!!  (I already wrote what follows last night.)
 
The International Software and Information Services Outsourcing Business Development Forum (in Dalian later TODAY)
 
Off to Dalian to give a presentation on ITO market opportunities, primarily from an enterprise software perspective.  What's hot, what's emerging, IT e-strategies (hmmm ... sounds familiar), the usual stuff.  A bit on "why China," but this is being covered by several other speakers; none of the other speakers seem to be focused on market opportunities from an apps perspective.  In case anyone is wondering, I'm one of the invited speakers at this forum.
 
Next: Collaboration Technologies: The Great Hope? (unless something at CISIS captures my attention).  (Oops ... after I finish this posting.)
 
What I'm Reading:  Besides four articles and papers on collaboration technologies, I'm reading the special section on P2P-based data management in the July issue of IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (a couple of papers from this issue have already been urled; see my urls blog), a paper on the evolution of IR to information interaction (I hope Google reads it), and a paper on web services for bioinformatics (which is a SUPERB paper, also already urled).  The latter paper may make it into a posting, so don't expect to see it on the "Top Ten" list for this week (but I might include it on the secondary list).
 
Cheers,
 
David Scott Lewis
President & Principal Analyst
IT E-Strategies, Inc.
Menlo Park, CA & Qingdao, China
 
http://www.itestrategies.com (current blog postings optimized for MSIE6.x)
http://tinyurl.com/2r3pa (access to blog content archives in China)
 

posted by David Scott Lewis at 7:39 AM