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Raja Simhan T E

David Wheeldon - BIJOY GHOSH

Cost arbitrage and availability of skilled human resources are advantages that India's software industry enjoys. Besides US companies, increasingly, UK-based companies have also realised the India advantage. Aveva Solutions Ltd, one of the oldest software companies in the UK, is one of them.

The £65.9-million Aveva, which was spun off from the Cambridge University in 1967, has outsourced its software development to the $400-million US-based Lionbridge Technologies' development centre in Chennai.

And, the results have been "pretty impressive" in the last one year, says David Wheeldon, Group Product Development Director, Aveva. Around 50 employees of Lionbridge, which has around 1,200 employees in India, work on Aveva products in Chennai, he says.

The Chennai centre is working on Aveva's new release of Vantage Marine, one of the company's largest projects involving around 300,000 man-hours. Of this, 70,000 comes from the Chennai centre, and the rest from Aveva's UK centre. "The new product is due for release early next year. If the Chennai centre did not exist and we had to do the project on our own in the UK, we would have extended the release by three to four months. Reason — lack of skill set in the UK," he says.

Lionbridge provides advantages such as cost, wage and skill set, and long-term support for the product, he says.

Wage difference

On the wage difference, Wheeldon says an engineering graduate in the UK without any practical experience is paid £20,000 (Rs 17 lakh) as basic pay. For a person with three years experience in Microsoft .Net capability and in transition from software code writer to doing design, the basic pay is £40,000 (around Rs 34 lakh) a year compared to Rs 4 lakh in India, he says. "With the huge cost and lack of skill set, we were unable to scale up human resources in the UK. Also with our growth plan we could not grow beyond a point in the UK. We had to move to India for these reasons. We also wanted to be closer to our customers in Asia, which is the fastest growing market for the company," he says.Also, customers want quick release of new product versions. Around 80 per cent of the world's top 20 ship building yards (many in Asia) use the company's product, right from design to fabrication of ships. "With the help of the Chennai centre, we will be now able to release new versions faster," he says.

Aveva's over 1,500 clients include plant owner operators, shipbuilders and engineering contractors such as 3M, ALSTOM Power, China Huanqiu Contracting and Engineering Corporation, Daewoo Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering and Dalian New Shipbuilding, he says.

Action at Chennai centre

Robin A. Lloyd - BIJOY GHOSH

Robin A. Lloyd, Vice-President and General Manager, India Operations, Lionbridge, says the company helps Aveva to sustain market leadership in Plant and Marine CAD (computer-aided design) software products.

Aveva's "Vantage" family of products delivers Engineering Plant Lifecycle solutions in the power, nuclear and oil and natural gas industries. Aveva's products cater to a variety of needs, from plant design using 3D solutions in CADD to Enterprise Integration Web portals using technologies such as .NET framework 2.0.

The Chennai centre carries out new product development, enhancement, support and maintenance for many of Aveva's existing products. One example of the work being performed at the centre at present is a major migration of Aveva's products from Legacy platforms to .NET, he says. Globally, the emerging trend is that companies outsource not only their non-core areas but also work in association with vendors in core product development — Aveva's relationship with Lionbridge is an example of this trend, he says.

According to Wheeldon, the Chennai centre works in conjunction with Aveva's UK centre. There is knowledge transfer and both work as an integrated team. In other words, the Chennai centre is an extended arm of UK operations, he says.

A dedicated team gives Aveva more flexibility than a permanent team, and Lionbridge can get skills whenever required. For example, the Plant Design Management System version-12 has 20 sub projects and half of that is shared between the UK and Chennai.

"Thanks to the Chennai centre, in our growth plans, we are today not restricted by lack of human resources," he says.

raja@thehindu.co.in

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