NEW DELHI, INDIA: Intelligroup, a global provider of business consulting, technology, and outsourcing services has been consistently included in the in the 'Strong Performers' category and received high client satisfaction scores by leading industry research firms.

The company has operations in the Americas, Japan, AsiaPacific, and Europe and is present in India in Hyderabad and Bangalore and has plans to setup a new centre in Pune.

Idhries Ahmad of CIOL caught up with Vikram Gulati, President and CEO of Intelligroup to know about company's India operations and go to market strategy.

Gulati, previously, head of Wipro's global Enterprise Application Solutions Group, also talks in detail about trends around Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and how companies are taking to SOA globally and specifically in India.

He also shares how his company has fared last year in terms of revenues and new customer acquisitions.

CIOL: We have been seeing lots of noise surrounding SOA in the recent years. Is it still hype or have we passed the stage and seeing SOA getting adopted mainstream?

Vikram Gulati: Definitely, I would say that SOA has become mainstream and no longer only a hype. People have to understand that SOA is not a concept that suddenly came out of nowhere. Though the term, SOA is new, the concept is not new at all.

We have Object Oriented Technology but different ways of calling it. However, the difference this time has been large companies like Microsoft, SAP and Oracle are adopting this and hence the term SOA is getting more traction. Today we see a change that is more radical and permanent than what it has been in the past

It is at least in a place in global market where people want to start implementing and doing critical projects around them. If you actually trace the history, you will find that even ERP, the building basis of SOA came about from Business Process Reengineering concepts which started in early 90's.However, these processes were not able to address all the integration problems.  This got to the idea of Web Services and ultimately the idea of Service Oriented Architecture.

The underlying theme of SOA is the effort to bring open standards to the corporate world and that thought is increasingly getting more traction across the industry. 

CIOL: What are the major trends that you have been witnessing in SOA adoption across continents?

Vikram Gulati: SOA is picking mainly in US followed by UK. The adoption is comparably much lesser in India but is definitely picking up.
 
Howver, I do not see any differentiation of adoption region wise. The difference is more from vertical perspective rather than a region perspective.

Like for instance, BFSI vertical is facing huge problems from the data perspective both in India or US or even Europe. For instance, customer has multiple relationships with a bank, be it a saving account, a credit card or a loan account. The banks, however both in US and as well as India, knows this customer not as a single entity but a customer with five different accounts.  
 
The banks are finding it difficult to standardize business processes, and getting applications to talk to each other. This has been the major pain point and they have not been able to address all the integration problems.  Enterprises across are board are now looking at SOA as a standard way of connecting between systems and hence we are witnessing the need for SOA among these verticals.

CIOL: How are Indian enterprises waking to SOA? Do you see pricing as a deterrent for the lack of traction for SOA in the country?

VG: Indian enterprises are waking up slowly. However I don't think pricing is an issue. Indian customers are willing to pay for ERP solutions. SOA is rolling out and we have got lots of licenses in the country. The growth rate that we have achieved clearly highlights that.