Open source monetization – still a far cry?

Open source monetization – still a far cry?

Global IT consultancy ThoughtWorks, Inc., with a focus on agile software development, is one of the apostles who have been promoting lean methods of product development

Friday, August 06, 2010

Coming back to Ruby on Rails, how do you see Indian companies going for this framework?

I think the level of adoption in India is moving at the same pace as it is doing in other places.

Rails is an incredibly powerful development environment. When you think about product development or marketing messaging, lots of the efforts go into trying to figure out what is really going to work from an interaction perspective.

However, with Rails, you can very rapidly try different approaches through some computer user interactions until you settle on the one which works well for you and your client, reducing your work significantly.

India is an exploding economy, with all kinds of opportunities for new products, new services, new customer bases. So, I think, the strength of Rails is going to play very nicely into your economic growth.

ThoughtWorks has been a propagator of Agile methodology. Could you share a little bit about the concept?

Agile is all about breaking down barriers in communication. When we go to a client, we see some of them having partitions between all their desks. So, to talk to somebody, you have to move your chair around. So we help them take all the partitions down to make communication far easier.

Lowering the barriers in communication also helps you get more effective software production. As the agile based arrangement allows for lots of informal sharing, it makes the whole processes easier.

With this methodology, software development happens in iterative developments, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between cross-functional teams. Thus, Agile methods promote a disciplined project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation.

You have recently opened an office in Brazil. What are the trends seen in that market?

They are huge fans of open source. There is a very strong open source community in that country and that is partly the reason why we chose Brazil when we were looking for a Latin American country for time zone alignment. They have several technology centers in their various cities.

Since you have offices in Europe, are you seeing any kind of Euro impact on your business?

Not yet. What we are seeing is a difference in the way customers approach a problem. One of the advantages of being our size is that we need not scout for long-term, multi-billion dollar contracts. It is good especially when people are becoming more cautious about the long-term commitments. However, we had our most profitable year ever during last year.

Any numbers on that?

I can’t quote them offhand. We’re thriving in this economic climate. As we do not play at a huge scale, we need not look for huge deals. And I am sure people are going to be more hesitant to sign a multi-billion or multi-year contract of the sorts that some of the big outsourcers look for.

In our market, companies are financially well placed, look at downturns as an opportunity to get a leap over the competition. We tend to deal with organizations when they’re developing new things, or trying to position themselves for growth or expansion. My armchair economic rationale for why we are still doing well is that, that is the kind of market we operate in.

Do you have some expansion plans in India?

We recently opened an office in Gurgaon. Hiring process for that facility is on. We have set a target to recruit 150 people in the next 18 months.

©CyberMedia News

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