Outsourcing: Raju Reddy, Chairman And CEO Of Sierra Atlantic (Part 3)

By guest author Tony Scott

Technology-Enabled Services versus Products

Tony: So that brings up a question, because there is obviously a big difference between doing a pure services play, doing a technology-enabled services play, and being a technology product company. How do you manage that within your organization? Each of those requires different kinds of skill sets, different kinds of talent, and different approaches to the market. With this new product you are talking about, have you thought about truly fully productizing it as a stand-alone solution that you go to market with? >>>

Outsourcing: Raju Reddy, Chairman And CEO Of Sierra Atlantic (Part 2)

By guest author Tony Scott

Leveraging Customer R&D into Intellectual Property

Tony: What are the core competencies you are focused on, and what’s the value proposition that you deliver to your customers?

Raju: There are two segments to our business. One is outsourced product development for software companies, and that’s a fairly fragmented space. The largest companies are probably about $100 million, no bigger, not counting Wipro and HCL, both of which do some product development. We have historically done product development for enterprise software companies such as Microsoft and Oracle and a variety of late-stage venture-backed software companies.  Typically, we look at companies as a good prospect if they have at least  $20 million in annual revenue. Our clients range in size anywhere from $20 million to $1 billion and above.  This represents about 25% of our revenue. >>>

Outsourcing: Raju Reddy, Chairman And CEO Of Sierra Atlantic (Part 1)

By guest author Tony Scott

From Intel to Outsourcing

Tony Scott: Before we talk about where you are today, can you tell me a little about how you came to found Sierra Atlantic?

Raju Reddy: Sure. I spent about ten years at Intel in a variety of engineering and marketing management roles before I started Sierra Atlantic.  My background is engineering, and I later moved into marketing. I helped to start marketing programs for the first generation of Pentium processors. >>>

Outsourcing: Vivek Chopra of Computer Sciences Corp. (Part 14)

By guest author Tony Scott

Outsourcing in a Shifting World Economy

Tony: Back to your point about companies changing, it’s not just about the local companies in India or China doing business in India or China.  It’s about the fact that those companies are going to become global companies, world leaders. If you look at the Global 500 ten years ago, I would venture that about 450 of those were companies in the United States, Japan, or Western Europe. Ten to twenty years from now, we will likely see the majority of Global 500 companies from places other than the United States, Japan, or Western Europe.  That’s a major shift. >>>

Outsourcing: Vivek Chopra of Computer Sciences Corp. (Part 13)

By guest author Tony Scott

The Future Giants of Outsourcing

Tony: The move to cloud computing clearly will increase the pace of change toward globalized delivery, but many are still concerned about the issues of security and confidentiality of data – do you see this changing over the next few years? >>>

Outsourcing: Vivek Chopra of Computer Sciences Corp. (Part 12)

By guest author Tony Scott

The Future of Outsourcing

Tony: Let me throw out some big, relatively open-ended questions to you.  If you look out three or five years from now, what you think the outsourcing business is going to look like? Do you think it is going to be significantly larger worldwide than it is today? And will India still be the dominant center, but with more on-shoring here in the United States or near-shoring in Latin America and Europe? Finally, what’s your overall take on where we are going to be, and why and where do you think CSC will fit into that? >>>

Outsourcing: Vivek Chopra of Computer Sciences Corp. (Part 11)

By guest author Tony Scott

Growing Globally through Acquisitions – It’s All About Culture Fit

Tony: Historically, for lot of companies, acquisitions have been extraordinarily difficult to digest.

Vivek: Yes. I think we have done it fairly well.

Tony: What have you done differently to allow that?  When you think about acquisition integration, whether you’re talking about one person, a hundred people, or a thousand people, the people and culture integration aspect is typically the most difficult to get right.  How have you successfully done this on a global scale? >>>

Outsourcing: Vivek Chopra of Computer Sciences Corp. (Part 9)

By guest author Tony Scott

Building a Global Culture Internally

Tony: So what are you focusing on to help CSC gain the ability to build talent that can operate globally? You talked about moving people back and forth. Are there also internal training and development programs that you’re working on? >>>