按键盘上方向键 ← 或 → 可快速上下翻页,按键盘上的 Enter 键可回到本书目录页,按键盘上方向键 ↑ 可回到本页顶部!
————未阅读完?加入书签已便下次继续阅读!
transcription in India was about one…fifth the cost per line of doing it the United
States; a difference that got a lot of people's attention。
By the late 1990s; though; Lady Luck was starting to shine on India from two directions:
The fiber…optic bubble was starting to inflate; linking India with the United States;
and the Y2K computer crisis…the so…called millennium bug…started gathering on the
horizon。 As you'll remember; the Y2K bug was a result of the fact that when computers
were built;they came with internalclocks。 In order tosave memory space; these clocks
rendered dates with just six digits…two for the day; two for the month; and; you
guessed it; two for the year。 That meant they could go up to only 12/31/99。 So when
the calendar hit January 1; 2000; many older computers were poised to register that
not as 01/01/2000 but as 01/01/00; and they would think it was 1900 all over again。
It meant that a huge number of existing computers (newer ones were being made with
better clocks) needed to have their internal clocks and related systems adjusted;
otherwise; it was feared; they would shut down; creating a global crisis; given how
many different management systems…from water to air traffic control…were
computerized。
This computer remediation work was a huge; tedious job。 Who in the world had enough
software engineers to do it all? Answer: India; with all the techies from all those
IITs and private technical colleges and computer schools。
And so with Y2K bearing down on us; America and India started dating; and that
relationship became a huge flattener; because it demonstrated to so many different
businesses that the combination of the PC; the Internet; and fiber…optic cable had
created the possibility of a whole new form of collaboration and horizontal value
creation: outsourcing。
109
Any service; call center; business support operation; or knowledge work that could
be digitized could be sourced globally to the cheapest; smartest; or most efficient
provider。 Using fiber…optic cable…connected workstations; Indian techies could get
under the hood of your company's computers and do all the adjustments; even though
they were located halfway around the world。
〃'Y2K upgrading' was tedious work that was not going to give them an enormous
competitive advantage;〃 said Vivek Paul; the Wipro executive whose company did some
outsourced Y2K drudge work。 〃So all these Western companies were incredibly
challenged to find someone else who would do it and do it for as little money as
possible。 They said; 'We just want to get past the damn year 2000!' So they started
to work with Indian 'technology' companies who they might not have worked with
otherwise。〃
To use my parlance; they were ready to go on a blind date with India。 They were ready
to get 〃fixed up。〃 Added Jerry Rao; 'Y2K means different things to different people。
For Indian industry; it represented the biggest opportunity。 India was considered
as a place of backward people。 Y2K suddenly required that every single computer in
the world needed to be reviewed。 And the sheer number of people needed to review
line…by…line code existed in India。 The Indian IT industry got its footprint across
the globe because of Y2K。 Y2K became our engine of growth; our engine of being known
around the world。 We never looked back after Y2K。〃
By early 2000; the Y2K work started to wind down; but then a whole new driver of
business emerged…e…commerce。 The dot…com bubble had not yetburst; engineering talent
was scarce; and demand from dotcoms was enormous。 Said Paul; 〃People wanted what they
felt were mission…critical applications; key to their very existence; to be done and
they could go nowhere else。 So they turned to the Indian companies; and as they turned
to the Indian companies they found that they were getting delivery of complex systems;
with great quality; sometimes better than what they were getting from others。 That
created an enormous respect for Indian IT providersf。' And if 'Y2K work' was the
acquaintanceship process; this was the falling…in…love process。〃
Outsourcing from America to India; as a new form of collaboration;
exploded。 By just stringing a fiber…optic line from a workstation in Bangalore to
my company's mainframe; I could have Indian IT firms like Wipro; Infosys; and Tata
Consulting Services managing my e…commerce and mainframe applications。
〃Once we're in the mainframe business and once we're in e…commerce…now we're married;〃
said Paul。 But again; India was lucky that it could exploit all that undersea
fiber…optic cable。 〃Ihad an office very close to the Leela Palace hotel in Bangalore;〃
Paul added。 〃I was working with a factory located in the information technology park
in Whitefield; a suburb of Bangalore; and I could not get a local telephone line
between our office and the factory。 Unless you paid a bribe; you could not get a line;
and we wouldn't pay。 So my phone call to Whitefield would go from myoffice in Bangalore
to Kentucky; where there was a GE mainframe computer we were working with; and then
from Kentucky to Whitefield。 We used our own fiber…optic lease line that ran across
the ocean…but
the one across town required a bribe。〃
India didn't benefit only from the dot…com boom; it benefited even more from the
dot…com bust! That is the real irony。 The boom laid the cable that connected India
to the world; and the bust made the cost of using it virtually free and also vastly
increased the number of American companies that would want to use that fiber…optic
cable to outsource knowledge work to India。
Y2K led to this mad rush for Indian brainpower to get the programming work done。 The
Indian companies were good and cheap; but price wasn't first on customers'
minds…getting the work done was; and India was the only place with the volume of
workers to do it。 Then the dot…com boom comes along right in the wake of Y2K; and
India is one of the few places where you can find surplus English…speaking engineers;
at any price; because all of those in America have been scooped up by e…commerce
companies。 Then the dot…com bubble bursts; the stock market tanks; and the pool of
investment capital dries up。 American IT companies that survived the boom and venture
capital firms that still wanted to fund start…ups had much less cash to spend。 Now
they needed those Indian
Ill
engineers not just because there were a lot of them; but precisely because they were
low…cost。 So the relationship between India and the American business community
intensified another notch。
One of the great mistakes made by many analysts in the early 2000s was conflating
the dot…com boom with globalization; suggesting that both were just fads and hot air。
When the dot…com bust came along; these same wrongheaded analysts assumed that
globalization was over as well。 Exactly the opposite was true。 The dot…com bubble
was only one aspect of globalization; and when it imploded; rather than imploding
globalization; it actually turbocharged it。
Promod Haque; an Indian…American and one of the most prominent venture capitalists
in Si