The Changing Landscape of the Software Industry and its Implications for India

As we approach the next century, the software industry landscape is undergoing massive technology and business changes. The client/server revolution has barely reached its half-life and it is already being eclipsed by the Internet revolution. Software development is moving away from the direction of being labour-intensive. Customers are buying more pre-packaged software solutions or software components that can easily be assembled on site by in-house personnel or systems integrators. Except for a handful of players like Microsoft, Oracle and Computer Associates, very few leading software companies of the seventies and eighties have survived into the nineties. A whole new generation of software companies have emerged that are focussed on selling advanced’ software components based on industry standards. For Indian software companies with superior technology development skills, the Internet will open up opportunities to build products that have never been built before and to enter global markets on a scale that was never attempted before.