India vs China: The battle begins.

There's no question about it: India has a massive lead on China in the software off-shoring game. But, behind the scenes, the Chinese are planting the seeds that could eventually make them major players in global outsourcing. On a flight from Chicago to Beijing last week, I sat next to a top Chinese programmer who gave me a taste of things to come. He's Alex Dong, a software architect and project lead who works for Objectiva. The software programming company was started in Beijing in 1999 but was sold in 2004 to an American firm, Document Science Corp. Dong's wife is also a software developer, and she works for India's Satyam. So Dong has a view into both worlds. His verdict, perhaps not surprisingly: China's coding is better.

Dong says the Indian firms throw a lot of programmers at a project rather than architecting it in the most effective way, and that they don't write code efficiently, which means it takes a lot of computing power to run the programs. "We can accomplish the same results in 5,000 lines of code that takes them 20,000 lines," Dong claims. "Their work isn't clean and well integrated."

Dong has a beef about the CMM certifications, designed and overseen by Carnegie-Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, which the Indian outfits have used to great advantage to establish their credibility with Western corporate customers. He says they don't really measure the quality in code. And they're a huge barrier to small- and medium-size Chinese companies that can't afford the time and money it takes to win certification.

These are provocative claims. I'd like to see what other programmers and analysts in China, India, and the US have to say about it.

Well.. me being a programmer in india. you could consider this coming straight from the horse's mouth.. well amost! You need to look at things in a holistic manner. The points stated by the senior chinese programmer are not totally correct, nor are they totally trash. Yes there are lots of cases where we have more than the required number of programmers for a given project, or for that matter a lot of extra 'resources' are sitting idle in big Indian companies such as TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Satyam etc., but the saying that Indian code is inefficient , would be a bold statement. Its by the virtue of superior Indian coding skill vis-a-vis other countries', that India has developed for itself an enviable reputation plus an unsurmountable lead in the software world. Apart from cost benefits, India offers great brainpower, huge number of engineers, who are not only brilliant in there field, but are excellent in adapting to all situations, great analytical capabilities and above all a proven track record. If China could really give India a run for its money, by reducing a program by 4 times, as said by the learned friend, then i don't think that size of a company could be a hindrance for them to prove that. Because all Indian software giants started off as a 2-3 men team in a rented apartment, and it was only with sheer passion and skill that they created behemoths of today. Coding standards and methodoligies followed by Indian companies are acknowledged by each and every company in the world and the best China can do is, match it, and never ever better it. With due respect to chinese companies, they are a long way from even reaching where Indian coders are today, leave alone leaving Indian companies behind. And looking at other domains where China is really THE BEST and THE BIGGEST, for example, hardware, construction etc., the logic that they are behind because of want of money, does not seem rational, becuase chinese are known to excel in every field they are passionate about and are aggresive in. And i have not even mentionoed the supremacy enjoyed by Indian techies outside India, i.e. in every company in US UK or elsewhere, you'll find Indians rooling the roost in top technical positions as well as occupying a huge chunk of programming positions.

The debate is wide open now.......

When the IT outsourcing Indian giant wobbles —if it ever does — experts generally expect that China will be next in line to the offshoring crown. Because of this, many CIOs are already eyeing China for their IT projects, but the realities of outsourcing to China currently offer a mixed bag of results. This article takes a close — and eye-opening — look at what IT outsourcing in China really demands by examining one CIO's pursuit of a successful IT offshoring development project in China. This CIO ultimately chose China over India because of the greater cost savings offered, and a lower turnover rate. This outsourcing effort had to overcome many difficulties, including language barriers, extreme time zone differences (12 hours) and a lack of specific skills. There seems to be no question that salability and value chain growth will take time to develop in China, but many CIOs are finding it worthwhile to invest that time now.

So China will come up soon..