A Cloudy Day

Another great day at NASSCOM with a further eight interviews with industry leaders, including the CEO and chairman of Steria and the CEO of Genpact. The messages today are consistent with yesterday, though the key area of divergence is around Cloud.

Cloud

There are people that are passionate about Cloud, who believe that Cloud is going to be at the centre of the industry very quickly, regularly citing statistics such as “25 per cent of all outsourcing business will be Cloud-based in two years”. The feeling is that this will represent new business rather than replacing existing legacy business. A key message about Cloud is that it will empower the business user, and as we explored yesterday, the CIO really needs to watch out.

Others are slightly more hesitant, stating that Cloud holds promise for new or peripheral applications, but that it will be some time before it is suitable for core and critical applications.

At the other end of the spectrum, references are being made to the “ash cloud”. Here, there are concerns over integration, security and business uses not being coordinated.

I think the general conclusion is positive though, and again the key message is that the decision maker is going to change from application owners to service owners.

Consolidation

Interestingly, most of the interviewees have been sceptical about the benefits of iGATE acquiring Patni. The general belief is that there will be two tiers of player – the largest Indian players (there are still rumours that one of the largest Indian tier one players are looking to purchase a major European or US company) and then the specialist tier two players. The only consolidation that will take place in tier two will be in order to strengthen specialisms. The general view though is that the iGATE/Patni merger is in a no man’s land rather than sitting neatly in one of these two areas.

More insight to follow tomorrow.