A month long winter vacations in an MBA course is a luxury provided by very few colleges in the world and I’m one of those lucky few who are enjoying this luxury. Relaxing in the comfort of home in the winters, life appears to be just perfect but the human mind being such will always find a reason to crib about. And the reason that I have found out is the pathetic state of electricity supply in my hometown Faridabad.
The power situation in most parts of Haryana has gone from bad to worse over the last few years, the same period during which we have been flooded with reports about India’s tremendous growth story.
I wonder what kind of growth this is when one of the developed states of the nation is facing such a crisis. Faridabad, one of the big industrial hubs of the country, has to bear around 12 hours of power cuts each day and similar is the situation in Gurgaon, the so called “India’s Singapore”!!!! Though when I move out of my home at night during a power cut, I feel as if I have reached Kandahar!!!!
The situation is such that a family can’t survive without an inverter and an industry or a commercial establishment can’t run without a generator. Even a lower middle class family living in a single room home can’t do without an inverter. If we total the investment on inverters and generators in a city like Faridabad, I’m sure the amount would be sufficient to build a power plant sufficient to serve the city 24*7!!!! Then the question arises why can’t the government build these power plants???? The answer lies in the fact that on an average the time lag between the conceptualization and operationalization of a power plant is more than the shelf life of a Government and so no Government is willing to bear the effort and costs because it knows that by the time the benefits of the project can be seen a new party would be in power to take credit of the development. And so they just follow the policy of make hay while the sun is shining and the nation keeping crying……
Monday, December 31, 2007
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
IT Outsourcing: Japanese Telecom Service Provider market
Japan is the second biggest IT market in the world with an estimated market size of $130 billion. The Indian IT companies are focusing on markets like Japan to reduce the excessive dependence on the North American and West European markets. The telecom industry in Japan is in a mature stage. The growth rate has slowed down and the challenge for the telecom service providers is to develop new areas and business models to increase their revenues.
The telecom market in Japan is dominated by three service providers. NTT is the pioneer of the Japanese telecom industry. It was the first telecom service provider of Japan and was under Government ownership. The two other major players were KDDI and Vodafone. In November 2005 the MIC awarded three new licenses, two of which will utilize FDD technology and one that will utilize TDD. With the taking over of Vodafone Japan, SoftBank has emerged as the third big player in the market. IP Mobile and eAccess are the other two new entrants in the market. This increased competition is likely to lower to lower the rates of services and will put pressure on the established players to devise new strategies to cut costs in order to preserve the profit margins.
The Japanese IT market is currently controlled by the five major companies: Fujitsu, IBM, NEC, Hitachi, and NTT Data who control almost fifty percent of the IT market in Japan. The rest of the market is shared by some 5,500 small vendors. Language and cultural barriers make it one the toughest markets to enter for the new vendors. The business and management practices in Japan are significantly different from those of the Western markets. The challenge for the IT firms is to get a share of this huge IT outsourcing pie of the Japanese TSP market.
The increasing acceptance of the package application software as compare to the custom built application has opened the gates for new system integrators. This has resulted in reducing the dependence of the Japanese TSP’s on the Big Five local IT vendors for the development and maintenance of IT applications. The immediate opportunity for Indian vendors exists in areas like package implementation and system integration since the TSP’s are looking to replace their legacy custom built applications with standard software packages.
SoftBank Corporation is the best bet for Indian IT vendors to approach the Japanese TSP market as it is the latest major player in the market and is growing very fast by providing the services at lower prices than the other players. Hence it is more likely to offshore its information systems to India.
The telecom market in Japan is dominated by three service providers. NTT is the pioneer of the Japanese telecom industry. It was the first telecom service provider of Japan and was under Government ownership. The two other major players were KDDI and Vodafone. In November 2005 the MIC awarded three new licenses, two of which will utilize FDD technology and one that will utilize TDD. With the taking over of Vodafone Japan, SoftBank has emerged as the third big player in the market. IP Mobile and eAccess are the other two new entrants in the market. This increased competition is likely to lower to lower the rates of services and will put pressure on the established players to devise new strategies to cut costs in order to preserve the profit margins.
The Japanese IT market is currently controlled by the five major companies: Fujitsu, IBM, NEC, Hitachi, and NTT Data who control almost fifty percent of the IT market in Japan. The rest of the market is shared by some 5,500 small vendors. Language and cultural barriers make it one the toughest markets to enter for the new vendors. The business and management practices in Japan are significantly different from those of the Western markets. The challenge for the IT firms is to get a share of this huge IT outsourcing pie of the Japanese TSP market.
The increasing acceptance of the package application software as compare to the custom built application has opened the gates for new system integrators. This has resulted in reducing the dependence of the Japanese TSP’s on the Big Five local IT vendors for the development and maintenance of IT applications. The immediate opportunity for Indian vendors exists in areas like package implementation and system integration since the TSP’s are looking to replace their legacy custom built applications with standard software packages.
SoftBank Corporation is the best bet for Indian IT vendors to approach the Japanese TSP market as it is the latest major player in the market and is growing very fast by providing the services at lower prices than the other players. Hence it is more likely to offshore its information systems to India.
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