Kudos to EC
Your Enterprise Software in India Inc. special issue was very enlightening. I have not seen a similar issue by any other IT publications. Giving an example of how an industry leader has benefited by a particular technology or solution has enabled us to understand technology better. The detailed analysis of the ERP, EAI and CRM implementations in various organisations has enlightened us in terms of the weak areas to watch out for and complications to be expected. Lately, Express Computer seems to be striving to be different from the rest and I must confess you have been partly successful. Keep up the good work!

Swati Gola
Delhi

Balancing act
Apropos your article, ‘Indian BPO players wear value-added services hat’ (Express Computer July 29, 2002). While it’s true that we have been doing low-end work till date, we have realised the fact that this was necessary to promote confidence in India’s capabilities. You have rightly pointed out that the need of the hour is to focus on high-end services, which can give the industry the much-needed margins. If the industry does find a balance between niche and volume, there is no doubt that the Indian dream would be hard to replicate by other countries. When the IT software service industry is going through possibly its worst time ever, the BPO industry surely seems to be headed in the right direction. The fact that more and more high-end work is now being outsourced to India stands testimony to this. Hopefully, this will have a rippling effect on other BPO players as well, and in the long term, augur well for the industry.

But high-end work also comes with certain prerequisites. India’s advantage is its skilled English-speaking graduate workforce. But this is not enough for high-end work. Such work requires highly qualified people. Are there enough professionals with the requisite skill sets and willing to work in a high-end call centre? Do we have the infrastructure required to mass train interested candidates? What are the skill sets required? Though the article doesn’t answer these questions, one feels that these are important points for consideration.

Satish Mehra
Pune

More details needed
Of late there has been a dearth of hardcore technology articles in Express Computer. Issues like security, wireless technology, disaster recovery, etc, are in the limelight right now. And these are very serious issues. The magazine should try and provide us with case studies of successful implementations, maybe even provide us with a checklist for accessing the security preparedness of a company. You could also provide us with a list the top vendors in each space and the strengths and weaknesses of each of their solutions. Most MNCs looking at India as a prospective business partner are worried about the disaster recovery solutions in place. But CTOs and even CEOs in India don’t have a clear idea about the whole concept. Most don’t realise that disaster recovery doesn’t just stop with having all the data on backup tapes. It’s necessary to educate the people about these aspects and the onus lies on magazines like Express Computer.

Nitin Gada
via e-mail

Corrigendum
In the article ‘Deloitte challenges giants of ERP’ (EC, July 15, 2002), M S V Rao, director of IT at Air-India was inadvertently quoted out of context. Mr Rao did not make his remark about ERP implementation from the point of view of Deloitte’s solution, as reported. Our apologies to Mr Rao.