In India, it's business as usual -- almost

IDG News Service - BANGALORE, India -- It's almost business as usual for India's IT and outsourcing industry, despite the threat of a border war between that country and Pakistan, both of which are armed with nuclear weapons.
Although the danger of a war has made U.S. and European companies nervous, they are unlikely to pull IT-related outsourcing and research operations out of India and instead may hedge their bets by implementing disaster recovery plans and scouting out alternative sites, according to industry observers and company officials.
Indian companies are the outsourcers of choice for many U.S. and European corporations. Multinational companies also have research and design subsidiaries in India, where the IT workforce is perceived as well-educated and multilingual but relatively inexpensive.
"I have not heard of any existing contracts that are being canceled," said Ravindra Datar, a senior analyst for IT services at Mumbai-based Gartner India Research and Advisory Services Pvt. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc.
Multinational customers of Indian companies that offer business-process outsourcing (BPO) aren't pulling out of contracts, but they are looking at the political situation carefully, industry insiders agreed.
"Our existing customers are concerned about the possibility of a conflict and how it may impact our ability to provide service, but based on our relationship and the reliability of our service in the past, they are comfortable taking a wait-and-see approach," said Prakash Gurbaxani, CEO of TransWorks Information Services Pvt. Ltd., a Mumbai-based customer relationship management and BPO services company.
Executives at multinational companies that have design and development subsidiaries in India say it would be difficult to move work to other locations. "It is close to impossible to move projects of the kind we are doing to another location, because the expertise lies with the people here working on the project, and the option would then be to move all these people elsewhere," said Rajendra Kumar Khare, general manager of Broadcom India Pvt. Ltd., the Bangalore-based integrated circuits design subsidiary of broadband silicon products vendor Broadcom Corp. in Irvine, Calif.
"At Broadcom, we have not considered shifting projects out of India because of the threat of war. Instead, we are focusing on ensuring the integrity of communications and the creation of appropriate data backups as a contingency measure," Khare said.
At Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies Ltd., one of India's largest software services companies, executives aren't worried about losing their existing customers. "I don't think any of our customers are reviewing doing business with us. In fact, we signed a new deal just last