Cheap labour tag insults India

As President and CEO of IPsoft, Dube's focus is on setting the strategic direction for the company and positioning it to become a leader in eBusiness service industry.

Prior to IPsoft, Dube was a faculty at New York University, where his research interests focused on deterministic finite-state computing engines. In an interview with Srinivas R, he spoke about the autonomic computing, challenges in the network management space and IPsoft's advantages in this. Excerpts:

Your research in NYU focused on deterministic finite-state computing engines. How is this relevant to what you are doing now?

Most of the IT companies in India look at hiring more and more people for services. These companies cannot provide any IT services based only on cost advantage. The cost advantage on labour is not going to continue for long. Today in the US, people get an increment of around eight percent annually. In India, it is around 25-23 percent. In the next three-and-half years, salaries in India will be similar to US salaries.

In Infrastructure management, there will be a transition from people orientation to expert systems handling most of the work. We are already changed to this. Our expert systems can handle 60 percent of the infrastructure management with out interference of a human hand.

How can machines - or expert systems as you term them - solve the network problems?

In 1900, humans manufactured Volkswagen. Today most of the work has become automated. History repeats. One has to learn from the history.

Today's network will be automated tomorrow. IPsoft is ahead in this. Our intelligent engine works like a clone of system administrator's brain. This engine uses its knowledge base to rapidly assess situations and consistently diagnose problems in the network. It automatically resolves the majority of the issues it encounters.

What is the market for outsourced network and systems infrastructure domain globally?

According to Gartner, the market, which is currently at $30 billion, will grow to $80 billion in next two years.

How is the response from global enterprises for such services?

Today no company can offer to take risk on its networks. It is a critical component of any enterprises. With network growing bigger and bigger with enterprise applications, challenge of maintaining these becomes even bigger challenge. IT service management is an issue for all to manage teams of technologists struggling with complex monitoring tools. Global companies are looking at outsourcing their IT infrastructure management to the experts.

How are you different from other companies who are also into the same space?

Infrastructure management is witnessing a silent revolution. Today over 35 Fortune 1000 companies are finding difference from our services. We offer asset control, infrastructure monitoring, network management, trouble ticketing, workflow, and knowledge management. We provide total transparency. Our clients can sight into every infrastructure element on the network. Our IP based expert systems mitigates issues before they become critical, even before they become visible.

Some of the companies treat the symptom, but we heal at the root cause.

If I have to tell in marketing terms, our services are 30 percent less expensive than others and save 60 percent of the cost in maintaining the networks.

IPsoft's advantage over competitors is the strength and cost-effectiveness of its technology. IPsoft invests 82 cents of every client dollar in service technology, where as industry average is 27 cents.

Which verticals do you target?

Our main area of target is finance, media, retail, distribution and information technology. We offer our services globally and we have our offices in India, Japan, France, London and in the US.

How do global companies look at India as a services destination?

In some parts, there is a misconception that `India is a cheap labour country'. It is an insult. Some countries put it diplomatically and say that Indians are good at entry-level work. It is changing. We have (Indian IT industry) to say that Indians can do the challenging work, which cannot be done by a US. Bangalore can solve the most complicated problem. Indians are known for their analytical skills. Today Indians are highly paid community in the US and followed by Japan.