FT-IT and FT Telecoms - Complete forward schedule
Updated: February 20 2002

Here are synopses for the next few months, and summaries of later issues of the FT-IT Review and FT Telecoms, with an updated list of contributors and correspondents. Please note: this is the only document we release which gives writers' names, where they have been decided.

The FT-IT Review and the FT Telecoms supplements are published on a regular twice-a-month format, appearing on the first and third Wednesday of each month. FT-IT takes up three of every four slots. FT Telecoms will take up the fourth slot (i.e. the third Wednesday of alternate months).

NB: The inclusion of an article in the synopsis does not necessarily guarantee the article will appear in the newspaper, because of occasional space constraints. The associated web sites, www.ft.com/ftit and www.ft.com/fttelecoms, are published on the same day as the newspaper version and carry the full list.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
Background information and suggestions for articles or themes that have not yet been assigned to individual writers should be sent, by e-mail only please, to itsurveys@ft.com where they will be considered by Andrew Baxter, FT-IT editor. Please do not use individual e-mail addresses, fax numbers or post.

Once articles have been assigned, please send information directly to the writers concerned, but PLEASE THINK BEFORE YOU SEND - SPAM IS AN IRRITATION. All the writers are on e-mail, please see list of freelance writers at the end. (FT staff writers are all on firstname.surname@ft.com) Information should arrive six weeks ahead of publication.

PICTURES, ILLUSTRATIONS:
Pictures, illustrations and charts can also be sent to itsurveys@ft.com - as JPEGs, PDFs etc.

FT IT - March 6 2002

Indian IT industry and market

These articles will be written by Khozem Merchant and Andrew Baxter.

1. Overview
The terrorists' attacks in the US in September highlighted a trend that doomsayers in Indian IT had been articulating for many months. The slowdown was real and painful. Yet companies' results for the period since the attacks suggest that while the slowdown is hurting, it is not as bad as many feared. One factor is clear: customers more than ever before are seriously factoring in the "geo-political risk" before outsourcing to India. That means a boost for rival emerging markets, such as the Philippines, Israel and Russia as they try to capture the forecast rise in outsourcing by companies in the US. How serious is this new threat to India and what are Indian companies doing to protect their turf?

2. Product development
One strategy being urged on Indian companies is to exploit more than 10 years proprietary work for foreign financial institutions and finally develop their own products. The industry has been based on services and product development has always been weak, partly because of the heavy capital investment and long lead-time. With long term lucrative clients in financial services now more keen than before to achieve savings and more nimble services with technology based banking services, how can Indian companies reap benefit from this opportunity?

3. Profile
A leading market participant

4. European market
Indian companies have traditionally put their eggs in one basket - the US market. But the attacks on the US have exposed the danger of this strategy, and Europe is the new obsession. Whether it is the more inwardly-looking companies of the German mittelstand sector or the British government rebasing the administration of its health service on an Indian-designed IT application, Indian companies stand to benefit from a market most have ignored.

5. End-to-end strategies
The aristocrats of the IT industry will be the end-to-end player - those that combine front-end consultancy with the back-end expertise of outsource application work. In other words, companies must combine glamour with grunge. It is the way forward for companies such as Infosys.

6. IT in Indian manufacturing sector
Over the past decade, the relaxation of import controls has encouraged Indian manufacturing companies to step up their investments in IT in order to maintain their competitiveness against imported goods. Much of the early efforts were devoted to purely production-oriented software such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) but recently there have also been investments in software to enable efficient product development. The next step could be internet-enabled collaborative product development, but how realistic is this and what are the obstacles?

7. Interview with Kiran Karnak, the new boss of Nasscom (India's National Association of Software and Service Companies) the lobby group that alone has transformed the perception of the Indian IT services industry.

8. Call centres: call centres have been one of the cornerstones of the Indian IT sector, with five centres opening every month in recent years, but they are now trying to move up the value chain to maintain their competitiveness against other locations which offer similar cost savings for US and European companies. Companies such as Customer Asset are pioneering the concept of outsourced, multi-channel customer management centres to exploit India's technological expertise.

Simply click on a a link to read a sysnopsis