Just read this article about a magazine based on MySpace. With 100 million users and many channels, this magazine could be a guide into that space (think TVGuide). The other option would be to make it about people and trends in that space (much like the gossip magazines centered around the movie industry). This is an interesting experiment by MySpace to strengthen the brand.

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After being spurned by MySpace, MSFT has entered into an agreement with Facebook to deliver ads to its properties. Although this will provide MSFT with valuable experience and learning, the number of registered users with Facebook is 9 million as compared to nearly 100 million users for MySpace.

While all the firms in the market have access to similar resources and markets, some of them have been more successful than others. Even the predictions, organizational structure and staffing models are similar. As I see it, there are differences in how they develop three capabilities: process management, client-based capabilities, and coordination capabilities.

While most organizations get the appropriate CMM and PMI certifications, some have the complementary assets to successfully implement projects. Similarly, some firms have deep domain knowledge and client management skills that they make sure get utilized on each project. Finally, their ability to coordinate expertise, people and systems give them a definitive advantage.

Here is an update after several weeks. There are over 900 mashups in the ecosystem.

On my plane ride back to Boston I read this wonderful book that captures the history of BPO. This book was written by Seetha Parthasarathy and published by Penguin Portfolio www.penguinbooksindia.com)

She picks up from the AmEx story and ends with the latest KPO craze. This book has both rich stories and industry statistics. This is a must-read for those trying to understand the BPO sector.

I'm off to Boston in a few hours. I leave convinced about the magnitude of change that the IT sector will continue to make for the Indian economy. The IT sector produced $18 billion worth of exports last year and is poised to grow to $60 billion by 2010. It employs 800, 000 directly and 2.5 million indirectly. By 2010 the sector would employ 2.3 million. The effects are seen everywhere. The confidence exuded by the young IT professions is infectious. Office parks are emerging everywhere. As reported earlier, once inside a office we could be in Boston or NY. The number of cars on the street are growing exponentially and parking companies are sprouting everywhere :-) Based on the McKinsey-Nasscom report, it is expected that many Chennais and Gurgaons are need by 2010. While all these numbers are staggering, it is the expectations and pride of the folks that I met during my daily visits and the interactions with students from GLIM that I will remember for a long time.

This annoucement that the deal could be potentially worth $900 million does several things for google. First, they get access to 100 million registered users. Second, they get to learn about ways to reach this interesting demographic using their ad server. Finally, they get to lock out the competition. The only question is if the price was too high.

Over the years, as one looks at IT Inc. in India, standards have played a key role. In the early days it was things like ISO and CMM level 5 certification. Later it was CMMi and PCMM. Today it is the ability to source talent and provide predictable and high quality work that conforms to clearly defined SLAs. In addition to these types of standards there were engagement models like the onsite offshore model that played a role in allaying fears about requirement gathering. All this was done while providing the clients with clear visibility into their work in progress. This has worked well for applications development and BPO work. As these firms move into more value added consulting work, what are some emerging standards that need to be incorporated? I see couple of roles becoming important -- business analyst and enterprise architects. These resources would form the interface between the onsite and offshore groups. Early indications of this trend can be found in the hiring patterns of IT vendors and some recent acquisitions.

Knowledge process outsourcing is the rage now.  One reason this is being hyped is the fact that cost arbitrage is fleeting with other LCCs (low cost countries) entering into the equation. As consultants would say, it is now about value adding. Since value adding and moving away from cost arbitrage sounds good, most companies are proclaiming that they do KPO.  While BPO has focused on routinization and repeatability, KPO (see: link) "involves processes that demand advanced information search, analytical, interpretation and technical skills as well as some judgment and decision making"

From Thompson's dependency notion, BPO is either sequential or pooled. KPO, on the other hand, is quite complex and involves pooled dependencies.

A new service that is now taking-off within the IT services arena is remote monitoring. While application development and maintenance dominated in the early era, companies do invest close to 50%of their IT budget on infrastructure. While infrastructure itself can't be move (at least for now), managing that can be outsourced. Large IT vendors have always been managing their infrastructure from one location. To them, offering this as a service to others is a natural extension. To support this service, ISVs have a category of software called enterprise systems management. Some examples are IBM's Tivoli, HP's OpenView, BMC's Patrol and CA's Unicenter. Once these systems are put in place, vendors can monitor the infrastructure remotely with support from the clients IT staff.

The IT industry has come a long way. In the early days they provided customers with technical resources who would work directly on customer projects and be managed directly by the customers. This was followed by project based assignments that were managed using process control and TQM techniques. Life cycle management and milestones were liberally used for executing these projects. Most of the resources were managed by the vendor. Once many of these projects were completed, the IT industry gained exposure to the business side too (Karthik, thanks for this insight). This exposure helped companies build deep domain expertise and led to the creation of verticals. This led to the next era of outsourcing -- total solution providers. Under this umbrella, solutions providers could design databases, applications, business logic, UI and test these using modern techniques. The consulting side of the vendors began to flourish. One new concept created by this was BPO -- end-to-end management of the process. What is the next era going to look like? While many technological and delivery methods are likely, one thing is for sure -- work will be global and distributed. Vendors that have platforms to support such work will be highly successful.

As I make my rounds from one vendor to another on the IT highway in Chennai, I am quite taken by the old and new Chennai. While driving on the physical highway my car has to fight for space with auto-rickshaws, cows, people and motor bikes. The road abruptly banks and becomes mud roads and then quickly transforms into clear sailing. Once inside the IT buildings, however, it is easy to imagine that you are in Boston or NY. The level of sophistication of the professionals, the processes and methodologies and the physical space itself was amazing.

A recent development has been the move by SIs in India to offer consulting services. At the same time, NA vendors are solidifying their global delivery centers in India. Who will win the hearts and wallets of customers? Is it going to easy for a consulting company to integrate development and global delivery centers or for SIs to offer consulting services? Even within global delivery centers there is variation in how local is the employment pool.

A major challenge facing systems integrators is to serve more customers, deal with more vendors in the ecosystem, create more specializations or verticals and to do all this without a linear increase in head count. Another challenge is to identify trends in service delivery models and technology deployment and to use H/R to both meet current needs and uncertain future needs. Talent management could be done by using training centers to plug gaps in competencies, using referral networks to farm universities and competitors, use acquisitions and JVs to meet capacity requirements.