Welcome to SaaS in India!

It’s happening finally. The focuse in the software services industry is shifting from the “software” part to the “services” part.

Wipro Infotech launches hospital info system

BANGALORE: Wipro Infotech, the India and Middle East IT Business arm of Wipro, has launched a hospital information system under a “pay per use” model. Wipro HIS (Hospital Information System) Lite would be suitable for smaller hospitals, which have not adopted IT because of high hardware and software acquisition costs. Under the “pay per use” model, such hospitals will only have to pay a monthly user based subscription fee.

- The Economic Times, Dec 12, 2008

This development highlights many interesting points:

1. The much talked-about software as a service (SaaS) model is finally being deployed in a very sensible fashion. The focus has been taken away from the much-vaunted software development capability of India and shifted to satisfying business need. This news post does not bother to mention who developed the hospital information system (we can guess that Wipro Technologies developed it, but that need not be the case).
2. This could be the right way to approach the Indian market. While IBM has been going after the high-end of the market (Airtel, DLF etc.), in a developing country like India there surely is a middle-market whose collective buying power could rival the Fortune 100 Indian companies. What better way to tap this market than the SaaS model? Who needs shared services? Those who cannot afford dedicated services.
3.  I have explained the capacity leasing model that the Indian software industry follows in great detail in earlier posts. Here is a service leasing model, where the service provider is truly backing his capacity to deliver business results, i.e. Wipro is deeply committed to business results for their customers. This is a much more respectable model and if successful could significantly change  the profile of the India software services industry.