With great recessions or depression comes great opportunity to invest and expand for both individuals and businesses. You are already witnessing lot of mergers, take overs and many old companies entirely vanishing from the earth. 

Thats true all over the world and especially many Indian companies taking this opporunity to expand their reach in bigger markets. The trend has gone little more far. Days of American companies coming to India for outsourcing are gone. Now many Indian companies are setting stones in US and UK to service their foreign clients.

TATA's who acquired Jaquar and Land Roover from FORD is one good example. It is planning to launch NANO cars using their dealership network in US. That is change of business model.  Don't wait for business to come to you, go where the business is. In IT servicing industry, this new approach is catching fire and taking many dimensions by Indian IT providers like HCL, Infosys and Wipro. 


I read an article published in PC world 2 months ago and like to share some essence of the article. Indian outsourcers are increasingly looking to put data and software development centers closer to customers, including opening ones in the U.S. Some outsourcers also believe that hiring local staff reduces criticism in the U.S. that Indian outsourcers are causing job losses in the U.S.

Indian outsourcer HCL Technologies has acquired its first data center in the U.S. from one of its customers, the company said on Monday.

HCL also took over the data center's staff and other operations, said R. Srikrishna, senior vice president for sales for the North America business of HCL's Infrastructure Services Division. The data center, located in New Jersey, fits into HCL's strategy to offer some services from locations close to its customers, Srikrishna said. The data center will in part be used to serve the unnamed customer HCL purchased it from, as well as offer services to other HCL clients.

HCL has already invested US$15 million to upgrade the 35,000-square-foot center to support eco-friendly technologies, virtualization, cloud computing, business continuity and mainframe management services. Customers want data center services delivered from locations close to them, he said. A customer in California, for example, would prefer to have services delivered from a data center in the state rather than from New Jersey, he added.

Although customers can save money by outsourcing IT services to India, this may not be the case with data centers, according to Srikrishna.

Setting up and running a data center in the U.S. is far cheaper because of India's high electricity costs, Srikrishna said. Real estate -- the other major cost for a data center -- is on par and in some cases cheaper in the U.S. than in India, he added.

HCL already has close to 5,000 staff in the U.S., and this is likely to grow, Srikrishna said. About 1,500 of the staff became part of the company after its acquisition last year of Axon Group, a SAP consulting company firm in the U.K.  A large number of outsourcing contracts, particularly infrastructure services contracts, have required HCL to absorb some of the clients' IT staff.

This change is also happening in banking sector. SBI India has opened branches in DC, Newyork and Chicago to act as US bank with Indian foot hold to attract NRI's investment. It is a good change and welcome one.

What do you think about this change? Share your comments and thoughts.