REPORT:India to gain from US IT services exodus

India to gain from US IT services exodus
S. Rajagopalan
Washington, November 30

India could be a major beneficiary of a massive exodus of services industry
jobs from the US over the next 15 years.

A report by Forrester Research estimates that 33 lakh American services
industry jobs will move to countries such as India, Russia, China and the
Philippines. Cumulatively, the jobs will represent $136 billion in wages.

The information technology industry, which accounts for about 10 lakh jobs,
will lead the exodus, says the research firm based in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Its message for American IT workers is to upgrade their
skills - or sink.

An Internet journal quotes Forrester's group research director John McCarthy
as saying that the base and middle level IT programmers in the US will have
to make a transition to senior level jobs as their present jobs will be
"shipped out of the country".

"The people who make this transition will be people who can manage these
offshore projects... IT workers will have to become more business-centric
and not just stay in their little technology cocoons," says McCarthy.

India has been identified as one of the main countries absorbing IT work
from the US. McCarthy, who's in India, has been quoted by Internet.com as
saying that it is not just cheaper labour that is prompting US firms to look
outside. They are getting better quality work offshore.

"India is a culture more focused on quality and process than America is.
They tend to be much more disciplined. They've done the most to turn IT
development away from a mystical black art to a real business process...
'Just wing it' is not part of the Indian culture," says McCarthy.

Not everybody believes in the exodus theory. Humberto Andrade of Technology
Business Research at Hampton, New Hampshire has a different view.

According to him, the high-end, value-add jobs will be retained by US
workers. The bulk of IT jobs that may move offshore will be confined to the
"low-end, time-consuming" parts.

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