Outsourcing: Vivek Chopra of Computer Sciences Corp. (Part 6)

By guest author Tony Scott

Does “The End of Software” Demand New Leadership Skills?

Tony: My friend Tim Chou, who set up Oracle’s on-demand applications business, wrote a great book called “The End of Software” about how software will be sold and delivered in the future. Do you think that we are starting to see the “end of software” as we know it – at least the old model of custom application development, and possibly even the model of licensed software running on a company’s own servers?

Vivek: On the product side, we recognize that there will be a certain amount of customization that will go into an engagement with a new customer. But every time you approach an application customer, you don’t start from ground zero. If you have a product you can place on the table, it’s a platform. Its functionality may be 50% at that point, it may be only 40%, or it may be 80%, but you have something to build on.

I think if you look back ten years, everyone approached applications from ground zero. You have an application that you need to build, I will put a bunch of people on it to build it, and once we are done, we move on to the next one and start again from ground zero. We are saying that you can test the collective wisdom and experience you have and build from that. For example, we have a product called the APM tool – Application Portfolio Management tool. Very few people have it, but if you look at what the customer has, within two weeks, depending on the size of the application portfolio, you can determine to a large extent what is the application portfolio base, which applications have to be retired, and which we want to modernize.

If we use that to make some recommendations for changes to a customer’s application portfolio, I think that becomes glue for your relationship with the customer. The customer will say, “Since you this well enough, you might as well do the development and maintenance for me.”  But is this – as we talk about the next wave of outsourcing – is this really moving away from labor arbitrage?

Tony: Good question – it could still be viewed as predominantly a lower cost solution based on labor costs, not value added.

Vivek: I think it comes down to whether there is anything else apart from the fact that you have virtualization on the cloud and the SaaS piece coming along very strongly to be a real value-added differentiator.

Tony: There is one thing I am curious to hear your perspective on, because you’re seeing this in terms of delivering across multiple geographies. I have a fundamental belief – based on my own experience helping companies build their global leadership teams – that there are going to be more and more cultural conflicts that come up as you grow organizations that must operate in a global environment. If a company is to be successful in that model, it will need to have people across all levels, but particularly in the leadership levels, who are global executives: globally-thinking leaders.

But how far down the organization do you think this needs to go? As you know, it is not just about language skills, although they are important. Even in India where you have many relatively fluent English speakers, even if you have people undergo training to reduce their accents, it is still really more about the cultural mindsets. It is about being exposed to other cultures, being open-minded, and trying to understand how other people think. The ability to interact on that level is what enables someone to you sell or deliver across cultures.

So how are you looking at the impact of that over the next few years?  Thinking about the number of people who are globally-minded Indians, or globally-minded Chinese, globally-minded Americans, or whatever, how do you get to the point where you can grow beyond being a defined by where your business is located? I think is a fundamental issue for a lot of Indian and Chinese outsourcers.

Vivek: Sure, it definitely is.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Outsourcing: Vivek Chopra of Computer Sciences Corp.
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