On a global scale, both developed and developing countries have formed a number of software industry clusters with different scales and characteristics, such as Silicon Valley in the United States, Silicon Island in Kyushu, Japan, and software parks in Bangalore, India, etc. . These industrial agglomerations have become an important part of the global economic pattern. Among them, the agglomeration of the software industry in India is of great reference.
India is the Silicon Valley of IT talent. In the US, more than 18% of Microsoft employees, 16% of IBM employees, 17% of cyber professionals and more than 10% of doctors and 21% of nurses have been educated in India. Pepsi, Coca-Cola, General Electric, MRT and even the Pentagon in the US use Indian software. In the major computer companies in Silicon Valley, there are many Indians shouldering the responsibility of research and development, and even Germany has announced that it will introduce software talents from India.
Due to proper decision-making and positioning, India has rapidly emerged as a major software producer. In 1990, its software output value was 50 million US dollars. By 2004, India's software export value had reached 12 billion US dollars. India has also set an ambitious development goal: to achieve software export of 50 billion US dollars in 2008, and strive to become the world's leading software export. The development of the software industry in India has the following characteristics:
First, the government strongly supports it. According to statistics, the average annual growth rate of India's software industry since 1993 is about 50%. The output value of India's software industry in 1998-1999 was 3.9 billion US dollars, of which exports were more than 2.6 billion US dollars. It is the second largest in the world after the United States. The second largest software producer and exporter. The Indian software industry occupies more than 16.7% of the world software market, and most of Indian software products are exported to the United States, followed by Europe. The Indian software company has contracted the operation software of American Airlines, Swiss Airlines, Singapore Airlines and other airlines, as well as the operation software of the London Underground, and its design technology is first-class.
According to a World Bank survey, 80 percent of US companies cite India as their preferred market for foreign software sources. No wonder, Microsoft's Bill. When Gates visited India, he exclaimed: "The software power of the 21st century is not the United States, nor Europe, but may be India."
Policies guide industrial development
India is a developing country and its comprehensive national strength is not strong. However, the development strategy of the Indian government is to start with several major industries, using limited resources and centralized policies to support the development of related industries. The result is that India has become the second largest software country in the world.
Rajiv in the early 1980s. The Gandhi government clearly put forward: "To bring India into the 21st century with the electronic revolution." The entry point of its government's promotion and policy is the software industry. In 1984, the Indian government promulgated the computer policy, which clarified that the software industry is an industry and can obtain corresponding subsidies and preferential policies (China only clarified the tax incentives and other policies for the software industry in Document No. 18 of the State Council in 2000). In 1986, the Indian government promulgated the "Computer Software Export Development and Training Policy", which provided all necessary inputs for software production, such as the provision of foreign exchange facilities for import and export, financial support, personnel training, high-speed amount transmission, simplified investment and import and export. formalities, etc.; and tax incentives, such as exemption from domestic excise tax, import and export of all software produced for export, can be exempted from customs duties and so on.
Among them, the policy of formulating software technology park plans has become a catalyst for the development of software in India.
In 1990, the Ministry of Electronics Industry of India announced the first 3 Software Technology Parks (STP): Bangalore (BangaloRe), Bnubaneshuar (Bnubaneshuar) and Pune (Pona), and in 1998 announced another 25 Software Technology Parks (STP) . Under the guidance of the policies promulgated successively in 1984 and 1986, software enterprises, mainly software science and technology parks, have developed greatly, and software manufacturers have benefited a lot.
In 1992 the license for the import of equipment and industries was cancelled, plus Rajiv in the 1980s. The Gandhi government changed the import substitution policy in the past, emphasizing: "Whatever is conducive to technological upgrading and export, whether it is raw materials, intermediate industries or capital products, can be imported." These corresponding policies have greatly stimulated India's export-oriented industries. software industry development.
After the establishment of the Vajpayee government, the goal of turning India into a "global information technology superpower" and a "pioneer in the era of information revolution" was established by the Minister of Commerce and Industry of India, Mora Soli. Ma Lang said: "We missed the industrial revolution, but we do not want to miss the information industry revolution sweeping the world." He also declared: "We want to become a big country in the information industry." Prime Minister Vajpayee clearly stated that information technology and biotechnology are the two major knowledge-based industries that India will focus on developing in the future.
In 1998, Prime Minister Vajpayee established the "National Information Technology and Software Development Committee", which has a wide range of members and great power. The committee issued the famous "2008 Information Technology Development Plan", which clearly proposed to use 10 years to achieve the goal of "software superpower" on the 60th anniversary of India's independence, and determined that the export of India's software industry in 2008 reached 50 billion US dollars The goal.
The IT development plan clarifies that the information industry is a priority industry in India, and proposes to break the monopoly of India's domestic information infrastructure operation and solve the bottleneck problem of information technology development; further reform the tax system to ensure the inflow and support of funds to the information software industry; Popularize information technology education and training; improve e-commerce and related laws, and suggest that 1~3% of the government budget be used for information technology applications to promote government informatization. In a word, the IT development plan provides a driving force and a grand blueprint for the development of India's information industry.
To this end, the Vajpayee government has formed the Ministry of Information Industry of India, which is responsible for implementing the goals and 108 recommendations of the IT Development Plan.
from Rajiv. Gandhi, Rao, etc., until now, the unremitting efforts of the Vajpayee government for more than 10 years have indeed effectively promoted the rapid development of the Indian software industry.
Tech parks help India's software industry take off
The first three STP parks announced are centered on Bangalore, extending along the coasts of southern India to Pune and Bubalswar, forming a geographically distributed coastal triangle. After more than 10 years of exploration and development, Bangalore is far away. Far ahead of the other two corners of the STP campus. The reasons are as follows: First, the Indian Institute of Technology is located in Bangalore, which enables the development of the software industry in Bangalore to rely on technology and talents. The Indian Institute of Technology has trained many world-class software engineers; In 1986, Texas Instruments set up a satellite ground station in Bangalore to solve the problem of high-speed data transmission. This move and the entire process of Texas Instruments broke the 25 policy restrictions in India. Later, multinational companies such as American Lowell Company also set up R&D institutions in Bangalore. Today, Bangalore has more than 200 foreign companies focusing on information technology, known as the "Silicon Valley of India".
Microsoft Corporation of the United States has set up a R&D center in STP, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, and HP, Compaq, International Business Machines Corporation of the United States, and Fujitsu of Japan have all set up R&D centers in STP Park in India.
India's IT talents are mostly concentrated in the neighboring states of Karnataka (Bangalore), Andhra Pradesh (Andhrar), Taminadu (Chennai) and Kerala. Forming a coastal triangle in southern India. The STP parks in these states are developing rapidly. Most of the development of information technology occurs in the STP parks in these states. According to some materials, 70% of India's software exports come from STP parks.
In 1991, the Indian government allowed the STP park to be registered as an independent institution. This can avoid unnecessary intervention by the local government. The directors of the STP park have extensive powers and have a strong sense of service. At the same time, they also perform their duties as a source of information and data. STP Park maintains a good relationship with the industry.
The All India Association of Software Industry and Service Companies (NASSCOM for short) plays a corresponding role in the STP park. NASSCOM has actively participated in the formulation and promotion of various information industry policies, and participated in the formulation of the 2008 Information Technology Development Plan. NASSCOM stipulates that software companies with more than 10 engineers must pass ISO9000 certification before 2000, so India has become the country with the most ISO9000 certification for software companies and the country with the most CMM level 5 certification.
Since a large number of American companies have established R&D institutions in India, and the United States is also the largest importer of Indian software products, the United States has the most H-1B visas (entry visas issued for foreign high-tech personnel to temporarily go to the United States) for Indians. In 1999, the number of Indian technicians who obtained H-1B visas accounted for 47% of the total number of H-1Bs in the United States.
The establishment and implementation of STP parks had a snowball effect on the development of the Indian software industry, and also promoted the development of the Indian economy. Practice has proved that the software technology park plan of the Ministry of Electronics Industry of India is successful.
Demonstration role of the Andhra Pradesh government
There are two government officials worth mentioning in the development of the software industry in India.
One is Dr. N. Seshagiri, who was Assistant Minister of Indian Electronics Industry in the 1980s. He was a promoter of a series of policies to promote the development of India's software industry. In the 1990s, he was the Director of India's National Information Center. The "2008 Information Technology Development Plan" was formulated.
It is worth mentioning that Chande Babu, the head of the government of Andhra Pradesh in southern India. Chandrababu Naidu, as early as the early 1990s, Naidu implemented a high-level innovation plan in the state. His innovation plan was used to attract investment in technology and promote the informatization of the administrative department to effectively establish The image of "e-government" has been improved, so that the government departments of the state, such as finance, labor, business taxation, rural development, registration, irrigation, consumption taxation, police and other departments, implement information management.
Naidu's policy innovation has brought a strong peripheral effect and demonstration effect, which has made the similar states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka successively formulate informatization plans for each state, and the above states in southern India. The informatization policies implemented, from investment in infrastructure construction, government office automation, one-stop service for entrepreneurship of information enterprises, and development of education related to information technology, have successively launched and implemented policies, which have brought prosperity and promoted information in southern India. development and economic prosperity.
The rise of the Indian software industry is, from a geoeconomic point of view, the rise of the software industry in the states of the southern coast triangle of India, or the result of the informatization construction of the states in the southern golden triangle.
Andhra Pradesh's informatization construction is one of the reasons why Microsoft Corporation of the United States is attracted to set up a R&D center in Hyderabad, the capital of the state. The state will use information technology as a lever to gain a leading position in the information age and build Andhra Pradesh into a knowledge society." Therefore, Andhra Pradesh was once hailed as "the heart of the Indian software industry".
The second is a rich talent pool. Today, there are hundreds of software companies in India with more than 1,000 employees, and the top five companies have more than 5,000 employees. These large companies basically only do software development. India obtains software technicians in the following ways: First, relying on institutions of higher learning. More than 400 colleges and universities in India have set up computer majors, which can train more than 10,000 graduates every year. The government also provides some teaching funds for more than 250 colleges and universities. The second is to rely on private or private institutions to train talents. At present, there are more than 700 such institutions, which can train tens of thousands of students every year. The third is the establishment of training institutions by software companies themselves. The Indian government has also offered computer training courses in 250 institutions across the country, and launched the "Secondary Computer Literacy and Learning Program" in about 3,000 secondary schools. This multi-channel training provides software companies with a steady stream of "software blue-collar workers". It is precisely because of the large number of basic technical talents that Indian software companies have formed a reasonable talent structure such as "project managers, system analysts, and software engineers".
Again, the industry has a high degree of agglomeration. In India's largest software park, there are nearly 1,200 software companies, accounting for half of India's software industry. Among these software companies, 8% are multinational companies, 24% are small and medium-sized enterprises, and 68% are foreign-funded enterprises. Among them, 43% of software enterprises are engaged in application software development, 35% are engaged in IT outsourcing services, and 22% are software technology companies. On average, 3 foreign companies are attracted every two weeks.
Finally, the industry positioning is clear. Indians have strong English skills, and India itself has no software market, so it has to face overseas. All these factors make India's software industry directly positioned in overseas markets, and also cause most of the products of Indian software companies are not final products, but intermediate products, such as system integration software, etc., which prompts practitioners to maintain the standardization of the production process , it is easier to interface with foreign countries. Currently, India is the country with the most quality certified software companies in the world. 170 companies have obtained the ISO9000 quality standard certification. Among the more than 50 software companies in the world that have obtained the US CMM 5 certification, India accounts for the vast majority. India is becoming the world's software center, and many well-known information industry companies, such as Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, etc., have established R&D bases in India.
India's total GDP and per capita GDP are about double that of my country, and the per capita IT infrastructure level is not as good as my country's, even lower than the global per capita level. However, in such a backward situation, the Indian software industry started 2-3 years earlier than my country, and the software export trade volume exceeded 8.5 billion, which was also 6-7 years ahead of my country. In 2002, India's software export volume reached 8.5 billion US dollars, while my country's software export volume in the same period was 730 million US dollars, equivalent to India's level in 1995. The reasons for the early start and rapid development of the Indian software industry have been summarized as three (“early start”, “high English proficiency”, and “profound international market relations”) or four (the first three plus “government support”) by previous delegations of our country ), or five items (the first four plus "IT education is developed"). But we see other advantages in India that go unnoticed.
An educational mechanism featuring the combination of production, education and research
On the afternoon of January 7, 2003, a delegation led by Professor Gao Wen, a computer expert from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, visited TCS, the largest software company in India. TCS is a member of TATA Group, India's largest conglomerate, established in 1996. TCS currently has 26 development centers, and established a development center in Hangzhou in 2002. Of the software development centers in India, 15 have reached the SEI CMM Level 5 level. Since 1996, TCS' revenue and export volume have maintained an annual growth rate of more than 50%. In 2002, the company's revenue reached 880 million US dollars, of which export volume was 815 million US dollars. Each year, 4% of the company's revenue goes to development centers in Pune and Hyderabad. When the delegation visited the headquarters of Satyam, the fifth largest software company in Hyderabad, the host introduced the situation to us at the training center. The training center has become an integral part of the software company, which has complete network facilities, international satellite system and international teleconferencing system. The company research training is different from the university education training. The company training is closely coordinated with the ongoing software research and development work. Software engineers with market experience communicate directly with young engineers. In the same way, learn through experience and experience through hands-on.
In our visits to the International Institute of Information (IIIT) in Hyderabad and the Centre for Supercomputing Research and Education (SCREI) in Bangalore, we both saw that 20%-50% of the cost of computer education comes from corporate R&D project funding, and that the college is responsible for It is said that R&D spending will account for an ever-increasing proportion of education costs. In addition, 20%-30% of the teachers of the college are engineers from surrounding software companies working part-time. The engineers have practical experience, they are invited to teach at the academy and directly help the students in their research and development projects.
The combination of education and R&D projects in the School of Software, inviting experienced software engineers to teach is an important link between education and the company. In addition, the on-the-job training of Indian software companies not only provides re-education opportunities for software college graduates, but also becomes the interface between college teaching and corporate training, providing graduates with practical education and experience courses.
Due to the good handling of the interface link of software talent education, groups of young software engineers in India can gain practical experience in the international market and the ability to solve specific problems. If Indian software companies simply wait for software academies to produce graduates with international market experience, and the companies themselves do not invest in developing on-the-job training programs, India will lose competitiveness in the waiting. Likewise, if the software colleges in India are purely teaching, and do not undertake R&D projects and hire experienced engineers to teach, the development of the Indian software industry will not gain the most valuable thing: competitive time.
It is not only the advantage of English
In the impression of the Chinese, India is a country that speaks English in general. Demographics show that India's English-speaking population accounts for only about 5% of the total population, but in a country of 1 billion people, this number is still a lot, only 10 million less than the United Kingdom of 60.05 million people, and more than Australia, New Zealand and Australia. Canada has a much larger population.
It was only when I arrived in India that I realized that English is only a working language in India's international business and political fields, and it is also a foreign language. If you read newspapers or magazines on the streets of India, and turn on the TV in your room to browse various channels, you will find that English only occupies a small part of all media, and it is still the mainstream media channels in Europe and the United States. There are not many local English channels in India. In public libraries in big cities in India, managers said that English books only account for 8% of all books, and more than 92% of books are books in various Indian languages. The price of English books is several times that of local books in India. .
Because of India's widespread use of English in trade and finance, computers and medicine, India has taken the lead in entering the world in these fields. It may be one of the few developing countries in Asia that can enter the international leading ranks.
Apart from English as a working language in some fields, the most commonly spoken language in India is Hindi (Hindi), which is spoken by 66% of the total population. In addition, there are 18 languages such as Bangla (Bangola). There are 10 different scripts in Indian languages, of which 7 are spoken by more than 5% of the population. These languages are different in pronunciation, grammar and writing.
In India, secondary school students usually learn English and Hindi in addition to the native language. If they graduate to work in other provinces, they also need to learn the local language. So, an Indian needs to speak at least 4-5 languages in order to find a job in the country.
Due to the high cost of language communication in India, India has made two major decisions to reduce the cost of language communication: one is that 15 years after India's independence, India decided to continue to use English as a legal working language in Congress, which greatly reduced the government's translation costs. In the field of international business and technology, India will continue to use English to keep the cost of international communication low. Another time, in 1976, it was decided to use technology to solve the communication problem of 6-7 different languages. Thus, language translation software was born.
When language translation software was developed one after another, it was first applied in the field of network and digital library, directly serving people who read network information and use digital library. People under the age of 45 in India, if they have a post-secondary education, have higher opportunities and needs to use the Internet and computers, and have a stronger ability to re-learn, and they account for more than 60% of the total population. With the development of translation software and networking, in the near future, the cost of language communication for nearly hundreds of millions of people in India will be greatly reduced, and the benefits of economic and social development will be greatly improved.
It is conceivable that in the future, when all major languages in India have English translations, foreigners around the world who can read English and use such translation software tools will be able to understand online information and digitized books from all over India, which will enable India Its influence in the world has been greatly improved, and at the same time, India's acceptance of foreign information will also be greatly enhanced. In the future, if this kind of translation software is made into a portable tool, foreigners can always read Indian texts that have not been digitized, such as newspapers, magazines and books, and Indians can also read foreign non-digitized texts at any time. Information, the level of globalization of Indian society and economy will be further improved.
According to statistics in 1999, there are four languages spoken by more than 300 million people in the world: Chinese, English, Hindi/Urdu and Arabic. The total population of English and Hindi/Urdu is nearly 700 million. With the help of computer translation software, English and various Indian languages can be translated into and out of each other, and the total number of people who can exchange information can reach 1.4 billion. India will become the world's first The nation of large computer language translators. India already has the advantage of low cost in computer software development and the advantage of a large number of computer engineers. If this goal is achieved again, India's position in Asia and the world will change dramatically.
The "Digital Library" Project for All People The
Indian government launched a special data library project in 2002, which was funded by the state's allocation of US$12 million. This project is called "TKDL" (Traditional Knowledge Digital Library), which we translate as "traditional knowledge digital library". Knowledge Libraries" project. The goal of the project is to scan traditional Indian medicine recipes printed on ancient books and Bayeux into a computer database, and use computer analysis to find out what may be helpful in the treatment of modern diseases. The project is supported by India's National Science Communications Agency ( National Institute of Science Communication) has completed the sorting of more than 35,000 prescriptions.
On January 7, 2003, computer experts from China and the United States were invited to the site of the scanning work of the "Traditional Knowledge Library" and watched the entire work process. The level of work done in India to organize computer-scanned documents is world-class, not only fast and of good quality, but also economical and efficient in organizing and managing.
For example, the scanning part of the work, which can be said to be "simple labor", the project management personnel hired 5 deaf people to do the scanning work. The Indians said that the purpose of this is not only to solve the employment problem of some disabled people for the society, but also to consider that deaf people are not disturbed by external sounds when scanning, and they are more attentive than hearing people, the quality of scanning and work efficiency. All are good, CMU's American computer experts also expressed their affirmation after seeing the scanning work.
I think there are four main reasons for India's success with the TKDL project. The first is the support of the top government leaders. On January 7, 2003, Indian President Kalam delivered a speech when receiving a delegation of computer experts from six countries. President Karam's speech actually started with the "traditional knowledge data library". The second is the positive response of local governments. Many cities in India hope to start computer-related projects. Mayors or governors want the local economy to transition to knowledge-intensive projects. They are both proud of the arrival of the information age and the role that India has played in the global economy in the information age. They have allocated land for free or built office buildings for free, and introduced projects related to the information industry. The third is that social and private entrepreneurs participate in the implementation. Scanning ancient books could have been done in public libraries. In order to be more efficient, India has recruited private companies to operate. After the private company accepts the scanning entrustment, it recruits staff and signs a 2-3 year contract. After the project is completed, the contract expires and the staff is automatically dismissed. The advantage of this is that there is no need to establish a new institution or raise a group of personnel, the project is time-limited, and the staff of public institutions are responsible for the retirement issue. Fourth, Indian employees are dedicated to their work. The polarization between the rich and the poor in Indian society is obvious, and it is not easy for ordinary people to find a job. Domestic prices in India are lower than in my country, so we can already live a stable life in India with our seemingly lower wages. Therefore, young Indian employees are serious, dedicated, and do not change jobs and are not impetuous. The close combination of the above four factors is the reason for the success of the Indian TK Library project in a short period of time.
Management also leads the way. When I inspected software companies
in India, I was impressed by the good management of software companies. There are thousands of large, medium and small software companies in India, and more than a dozen super-large companies. In Hyderabad, India's fifth largest software company - Satyam (Satyam) has 9,000 software staff. The company's software exports in 2002 amounted to about US$400 million, second only to Guangdong Province, my country's largest software export base, which exported US$430 million in software last year.
However, my country's largest software company currently has more than 3,000 employees, and its output value is far less than that of an Indian software company. According to the company management theory, the larger the company scale and the more employees, the higher the company's management cost and the greater the management difficulty. In this sense, Chinese software companies are not of the same order of magnitude as India in terms of management difficulty due to their small scale and small number of employees.
India has a large population and a vast territory, and how to manage it so that the work can be coordinated across the country has become the focus of the work. The high management efficiency of the Indian digital library project has deeply sighed the American and Chinese counterparts. With the help of US scanning equipment and the support of Indian government funds, India has quickly established 18 book scanning centers across the country. Last year, 30 million pages of books were scanned, most of which were ancient books and documents from 100 to 3,000 years ago. This year's scale To add to that, India has set a scanning record that surpassed that of the US and China.
The Indian approach is distinctive: Headquarters are set up in Bangalore, and a director with extensive marketing experience is hired as the national project coordinator. He runs a lap every month in 18 scanning centers across the country, coordinating the scanning progress of each center, finding problems and solving them in time. Taking this method makes each scanning center have a competitive mentality, and no one wants to be the last one, so he All work hard.
India has set up two scanning centers in the city of Hyderabad, each center has 4-6 scanning equipment, and each equipment is operated by two employees. One is responsible for scanning, and the other is responsible for removing the four frames and adjusting them with a computer. Each two scanning equipment is equipped with a computer for OCR processing. Talking to the scanning staff, I learned that they work two shifts a day, 8 hours per shift, with no breaks in between. It scans about 300 single pages per hour and about 500 double pages per hour.
India has an earlier history of business administration education than my country, and it has a higher degree of internationalization. This was felt when we visited the International School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad. The ISB was originally in Mumbai, and the city of Hyderabad allocated 250 hectares of land to relocate the college. The college invites the presidents of world-renowned large companies to give reports every month. The tuition fee here is 15,000 US dollars a year, plus 5,000 US dollars of living expenses for a year, a total of 20,000 US dollars (164,000 yuan). It is lower than the cost of 198,000 yuan (RMB 198,000) that does not include room and board for an MBA in a famous university in my country, and is lower than the $90,000 cost of Wharton and Harvard Business School in the United States. Indian globalization companies are second only to Japan and South Korea in Asia. They have rich experience in international business management. The most famous business school has become the most cost-competitive school in the world in English, attracting Asian students to come to study.
There are many business schools with international standards like this in India. Every year, many international-level professional managers are trained to manage Indian companies and overseas Indian companies, which greatly improves the management level of enterprises. More than ten Indian software companies have passed the international 5-level quality certification standard, but no software company in my country has passed it yet, which makes us pay attention to the management of Indian software companies.
Indian higher education is world-renowned. The teachers, teaching materials and teaching management of Indian universities are not much different from those of famous universities in western developed countries. Especially the five-star famous universities such as Bangalore University and Vellore University of Science and Technology, their teachers, teaching materials and teaching management are almost on the same level as the world famous universities. It is in line with international standards in terms of faculty, school scale, and discipline setting, and the output of talents is world-class. Graduates are in demand in the international talent market. In May 2000, India's Minister of Information Technology announced in Washington that India could export 200,000 IT talents to countries around the world every year. India has become a veritable "power of information technology industry and talent" in the world. At present, whether it is the United States, the United Kingdom, or Germany, these countries are very eager for India's information technology talents.
2010.4.25
Source:
UNDONER ( Xiaojie Blog ) : http://blog.csdn.net/undoner
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