The Next Wave

Archana Rai August 07, 2006 00:00 IST The Next Wave -0001-11-30T00:00:00+05:53

It's being billed as the next big battle in the global software arena. In offshore circles, it's being termed as World War C. Having proved the efficacy of their low-cost offshore model, Indian firms are eyeing a big slice of the more lucrative pie—consulting projects. Instead of low-value, commoditised jobs, they're bidding for these high-value projects. Pitted against Infosys, TCS and Wipro are the big five global majors—IBM, Accenture, EDS, Cap Gemini and HP.

The stakes are high. In the next two years, outsourcing contracts (including end-to-end consulting ones) worth $100 billion are expected to come up for renewal; of these, $17 billion worth of fresh deals will be inked in the next six months of 2006. Claims Atul Vashistha, founder-CEO, neoIT, "The opportunity for Indian IT majors is huge." Adds Siddharth A. Pai, partner and MD, TPI India, "Increasingly, Indian IT service providers are bagging (high-value) contracts for remote IT infrastructure work too."

Looking at the potential, Indian biggies have drawn up ambitious plans...