The Indian IT industry is seeing a third wave. The first wave was when India saw the emergence of domestic IT behemoths catering to global 1000 companies. Though it was a long process, the first wave signaled the arrival of Indian IT companies on the world stage. The second wave was the BPO industry.

In less than a decade India emerged as the world’s first choice for BPO operations. This was also the period when software giants like Oracle, Microsoft and SAP started tinkering with low-end product development activities out of India and the more bolder ones such as Aspect Development (eventually sold for $9.3 billion to i2) that placed their entire bet on India. The latter triggered the third wave that has just begun and it’s all about transitioning high-end software product development in high volume to India.

This third wave offers fabulous opportunities to the current generation of IT professionals.

Firstly, the nature of work is crème de la crème of all software work. This offers tremendous opportunity to be creative and innovative and get closer to the wide base of actual end-users. Also, since the work is directly tied to revenue generation for the company, potential rewards for widely accepted solutions are outstanding both in terms of wealth generation and self recognition. However, the best opportunity it offers young engineers today is a fabulous training ground for motivated entrepreneurs who can experience the thrill of creating software or services companies focused on such exciting work.

To capitalize on such an opportunity the IT professionals need to switch their focus from technology to domain. Only individuals that have deep domain knowledge of the space be in CRM, CAD, etc will have the background to understand and provide unique innovative solutions to business problems. Gaining domain knowledge comes through tenaciously sticking to a single field for years together than switching projects and companies every six to nine months.

Finally, to be successful in this field, Indian companies and professionals have to change their mindset. Though Indians have the right attitude and tenaciously drive for progression, what is required is a change in thinking. All these years’ Indian companies built software to the specifications of their U.S. and European clients. The change in mindset requires a shift from completing tasks to taking ownership of end-user problems and striving for innovative solutions. This entails getting under the skin of the end-user and having a deep understanding of the problem they are addressing.

Software product development is the next huge wave in India. Today IT Services companies dominate the top tier but its not long before the industry will see Product focused Services Company emerge in the top tier. Software product development is going the manufacturing way. There will soon emerge the ‘Flextronics’ of software manufacturing out of India. The sun is on the rise in Bangalore for software product development. U.S. companies have seen this before and they always emerged stronger than ever. Few decades ago, manufacturing oriented U.S. companies capitalized on the use of efficient labor worldwide and emerged stronger for themselves and their consumers.

U.S. software companies will go the way as Dell and Cisco – market and marketing savvy and having the foresight to fully capitalize on design, innovation and production through efficient locations worldwide. India stands the best chances of enabling the U.S. software companies leverage global advantage for product innovation and engineering.

Ravi Kela is President, Symphony Services