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Indian
software companies have relentlessly pursued the goal of
reaching the highest standards in quality. Not surprisingly,
as of October 2001, India had 32 companies at SEI CMM Level 5
assessment, when there are only about 58 organisations across
the world which have acquired this assessment. The focus on
quality on the part of Indian majors has in turn attracted
many global vendors like Rational and Spectrum Software, who
have started looking at the Indian market in a big way.
Says Sarathi Srinivasan, president, Spectrum Software,
“We undoubtedly have a big market potential waiting to be
tapped in India. One of the primary reasons is the fact that
India has the most number of CMM-level 4 and CMM-level 5
certified IT organisations, all of whom are very process
oriented. The worldwide configuration management industry
according to OVUM is currently pegged at $2.5 billion and
projected at $6.5 billion by 2005. According to OVUM, the
worldwide sales distribution was 66 percent in the US, 26
percent in Europe, while the rest of the world contributes
about 8 percent. So if we assume that even if one percent
contribution will come from the Indian market space with its
vast number of IT organisations, it converts to a mammoth $65
million opportunity. This potential is bound to grow as the IT
industry continues to flourish.”
Though Rational has a major presence in the Indian
market, Spectrum believes it can capture a significant pie of
marketshare because of its entry-level pricing. This could
give Spectrum a foothold in sectors like small and medium
companies that don’t buy Software Configuration Management
(SCM) tools since they are very expensive. Adds Srinivasan,
“If we consider all IT organisations in India and take about
20 percent of the software engineers amongst these
organisations, we can easily target 15,000 to 25,000 licenses.
Our first year goals are 1,000 licenses and the second year
target is 10,000 licenses. The third and fourth year goals are
1,00,000 and 1 million user licenses. This translates to $0.6
million, $6.5 million, $65 million, and $582 million for years
1 to 4 respectively for SpectrumSCM.”
Industry analysts believe that Spectrum could score
over its competitors since it is a 100 percent Java-based
product, which makes it platform independent. The product
offers Source Configuration Management, which is not confined
to just software configuration or even source control, but a
whole product life-cycle tracking of product source, whether
it is documents, images, Web pages or standard software source
code. Every source is tracked from the day it is introduced
under SpectrumSCM, thereby effectively controlling all product
builds or releases.
Though the slowdown in the economy has affected the
market for such tools, Spectrum is banking on the constant
quality focus of Indian software companies. Explains
Srinivasan, “Fundamentally, though organisations are watching
their budgets, many organisations in India today are trying to
improve productivity by improving their processes using SCM
tools.”
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