MUMBAI: According to Nasscom chairman Arun Kumar, the embedded software and system market is scheduled to grow at a steady clip. "The worldwide market of $21 billion in 2001 in embedded software offers a huge opportunity for Indian companies," Kumar said. He noted that a number of international applications developers are tapping Indian expertise in this regard. Texas Instruments, Motorola, Intel, and Cadence are setting up large development centres in India and leading Indian IT companies such as TCS, Wipro, HCL Technologies have begun to focus on this sector. Nasscom has identified the four factors that will make embedded systems space an exciting arena for Indian companies that include rising software content, rapidly evolving hardware, and opportunities in protocols and software skills in Original Equipment Manufacturers. Nasscom has also identified activities that can be carried out by third party providers or offshore hubs in India. They include product development partnerships where companies can work with customer's in-house team to share product development workload, reducing costs and time-to-market, validation services in which companies can use extensive tools to objectively validate code written by in-house engineers or other vendors. Other activities include maintenance services where companies could maintain customer code, making and documenting any changes required during the life cycle and professional services with which companies could help end users modify and use their products. Said market analyst Paul Saffo: "Over 60 percent of the top global independent software vendors are already leveraging India for maintenance services and new product development. "Many companies have already started providing complete solutions in this area by leveraging the existing design and programming capabilities within the industry while outsourcing the actual development of chips to external silicon wafer manufacturers."
Source: IANS