Serious about development
Microsoft's India Development Centre was described by some as a body
shop where code jocks did grunt work on small, meaningless projects. No
more.
Microsoft's biggest India presence, its India Development Centre, or IDC, sits on the outskirts of Hyderabad in the area referred to as Cyberabad, along with several other swank offices where thousands of young Indians put together software for global tech giants. And, one does not get any more gigantic than Microsoft, which generated revenues of $68.5 billion last year. But, despite attracting some of India's best and brightest it took a while to light the fire underneath IDC. "We stumbled a bit in the beginning. We had far too many charters and were spread out too thin doing far too many small projects , "explains Vinod Anantharaman, Strategy Head, IDC.
The development centre had, as Anantharaman explained, become a place where engineers from Microsoft headquarters in Redmond near Seattle in the United States often sent small (and often pointless) projects to be completed. This meant that engineers in Hyderabad often reached a dead-end in their career, with the only avenue of progress being a move to the US headquarters.
But as IDC reached the 1,000 employee mark in 2006, it realised the need for a change in direction. "We realised that the work we did had to play a key role in Microsoft projects globally,"says Anantharaman. So instead of doing slivers of development on pieces of a project, the executives at IDC presented their superiors at Redmond a proposal for proper "distributed development". "Team sizes have moved from 20-30 people to over 80-100 now," says Anantharaman.
Also, projects at IDC now involve work that is far more tangible. Take the example of the team led by Rajiv Chatterjee, who like many of his colleagues at IDC returned to India after spending over a decade in the United States. Chatterjee's team worked on something that those of us who will use mobile devices running the new Windows Phone 7 as well as future Nokia smartphones will experience - a fully integrated version of Microsoft Office that works on mobile phones. "It is great having a 'deep' charter because it really tests and challenges engineers and keeps them motivated," Chatterjee says.
Of course, there are still issues that crop up due to the Redmond headquarters being twelve timezones away. But, as Chatterjee explains, a 'deep' charter also means a less frequent sending of software code back and forth once the development parameters have been set.
These parameters are often set with the help of Hyderabad teams. Microsoft IDC's swanky new building - certified to be greenfriendly - with space for over 3,000 people is only half occupied at present. That should change soon. Chatterjee and Anantha-raman predict that the building will be filling up soon and the engineers in India will begin working on critical bits of future versions of Windows and Office as also Web software such as Bing, Microsoft's search engine. And possibly even engineer the software giant's move onto the cloud. That's far, far removed from the body shopping tag.
The development centre had, as Anantharaman explained, become a place where engineers from Microsoft headquarters in Redmond near Seattle in the United States often sent small (and often pointless) projects to be completed. This meant that engineers in Hyderabad often reached a dead-end in their career, with the only avenue of progress being a move to the US headquarters.
But as IDC reached the 1,000 employee mark in 2006, it realised the need for a change in direction. "We realised that the work we did had to play a key role in Microsoft projects globally,"says Anantharaman. So instead of doing slivers of development on pieces of a project, the executives at IDC presented their superiors at Redmond a proposal for proper "distributed development". "Team sizes have moved from 20-30 people to over 80-100 now," says Anantharaman.
Also, projects at IDC now involve work that is far more tangible. Take the example of the team led by Rajiv Chatterjee, who like many of his colleagues at IDC returned to India after spending over a decade in the United States. Chatterjee's team worked on something that those of us who will use mobile devices running the new Windows Phone 7 as well as future Nokia smartphones will experience - a fully integrated version of Microsoft Office that works on mobile phones. "It is great having a 'deep' charter because it really tests and challenges engineers and keeps them motivated," Chatterjee says.
Of course, there are still issues that crop up due to the Redmond headquarters being twelve timezones away. But, as Chatterjee explains, a 'deep' charter also means a less frequent sending of software code back and forth once the development parameters have been set.
These parameters are often set with the help of Hyderabad teams. Microsoft IDC's swanky new building - certified to be greenfriendly - with space for over 3,000 people is only half occupied at present. That should change soon. Chatterjee and Anantha-raman predict that the building will be filling up soon and the engineers in India will begin working on critical bits of future versions of Windows and Office as also Web software such as Bing, Microsoft's search engine. And possibly even engineer the software giant's move onto the cloud. That's far, far removed from the body shopping tag.
