Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO of IT-outsourcing giant Infosys Technologies of Bangalore, India, is in town for the Microsoft CEO Summit. Gopalakrishnan sat down with TechFlash at his company's offices in Bellevue to talk about the U.S. and global economy, Microsoft, cloud computing, and rubbing elbows with Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. He also discussed his multiple mobile devices, including his Windows Mobile phone and iPhone.
On how the economic downturn is affecting Infosys:
Business has slowed down. Growth has come down significantly from a couple years back. We were growing around 35 percent annually and last year we grew 11 to 12 percent. So it has come down and this year it looks we'll have an almost flat year. So growth has come down significantly, and every single one of our customers have reduced their spending and obviously our business is affected. Having said that, I believe that, you know, we may have reached the bottom. We are seeing early signs of a recovery. It will be a prolonged recovery. That's what all the experts are telling us now. The spending will not restart immediately. Everybody will be very cautious about when to start spending. Similarly, jobs are not going to come back immediately. It will take some time for the recovery to impact the spending side as well as the jobs side. But we are seeing early signs of recovery, and we are seeing also recovery happening faster in places like India, China, etc.
On the global economy:
If you look at the U.S., the U.S. GDP was growing at around 2 or 3 percent and it's come down to around zero. India was growing 8 to 9 percent, it's come down to 5 to 6 percent. The decline in growth rate is actually very similar, a 3 percent drop. But what is positive for India is that it's 5 to 6 percent instead of zero. With 5 to 6 percent growth we're not seeing the same unemployment levels that are experienced by the U.S. or other developed companies. In countries like India, we're in a very different phase of development. In order to sustain the momentum, we have to bring a lot more people into the quote-unquote middle class, and raise them from poverty. That has slowed down. In the last 15 years we have converted the middle class from 100 million to 300 million. But the flip side of that is that 700 million are not middle class and ... we have to raise the growth rate to 8 to 9 percent to bring more people into the middle class. This has implications for companies everywhere, including companies in the U.S. and Seattle. If you take the airline industry, India is one of the fastest growing markets for the airline industry. The slowdown has implications to companies like Boeing, etc., that are seeing a large number of orders from India. If the economy starts growing again at 8 to 9 percent, that will be beneficial for not just India but for companies around the world.
On the technology industry and Microsoft:
This slowdown will have implications because lots of changes are happening. For example, one is consolidation amongst the large players. You now have IBM with end-to-end capability, HP with end-to-end capability, recently you saw Oracle announcing the acquisition of Sun. You're creating large companies with end-to-end capability. You have to understand what it means to an Infosys, what it means to a Microsoft, because we don't have end-to-end capability. Infosys doesn't have end-to-end capability. We just play in the applications space, in the services space. Microsoft has some part of the stack. Now you have 3 large players with probably the end-to-end capability. The second implication for companies like Infosys: Is there a change in the way outsourcing is done? Traditional outsourcing is done by saying, I will outsource applications, I will outsource maintenance, I will outsource my data center. Now it is possible that companies will say, I don't want to outsource that way, I want to outsource based on business value and business success. What I'm saying is I'll outsource my customer service function, I'll outsource my financial and accounting function, I'll outsource my HR. Payroll was always outsourced that way. But I'll outsource more and more of my requirements based on business value, business process, and let the outsource partner handle the discrete layers within that, hardware through services. If that change happens, and outsourcing changes that way, what is the role of an Infosys, and what is the role of each one of the players -- an IBM, an Oracle, a Microsoft -- and is there going to be a restructuring of the industry because of that?
On cloud computing:
What we believe our value proposition is, is we understand the customer's business very well, having worked in certain industries for a very long time. We have a relationship with all these customers, all these companies. Our value proposition is we understand the customer's business, we understand how to integrate disparate systems. It' still not going to be one system. It's going to be a set of systems, and the integration becomes very, very important. It will not move to the cloud immediately. It will move over a period of time, so that integration again becomes very, very important. You need somebody who's independent. You don't want to get tied into to one service provider or one hardware stack alone. You want some independence from these things. That's why I believe Infosys will have a play. We are actually creating relationships with SAP, Oracle Microsoft to provide services on top of their platforms on a transaction base, or per-use base.
Do you work with Amazon Web Services now?
Not yet.
Could you work with Amazon?
Yea, we are exploring ... The reason why we have not looked at Amazon yet, is our customer base is in large enterprises, the Fortune 500, Global 1000 companies.
On the mobile software market:
The number of mobile phones far, far exceeds the number of PCs. Mobility gives you the flexibility to interact with your back end applications independent of space, independent of location and independent of time. When you look at a consumer, you can do banking transactions using mobile phone, you can do purchases using the mobile phone. You can do retail stuff, you can get a restaurant coupon on a mobile phone. A lot of consumer-based services I believe will move to mobile. So mobile will become part of how enterprises will deliver services to the consumers. It's part of your delivery mechanism. For any company in the future, it has to be part of that. You can get your boarding card loaded on your mobile phone, flash it ... Some places, it's already done. In India, I can get a boarding pass on my mobile phone and I can just show it at the airport to check in. It's very user friendly to the consumer and I strongly believe that because of that, it will really take off. There are concerns about security and all that stuff but it will get resolved as you go along and hence I think mobile (phones) will be much more important in the future than they are today. it also means that phones will have to become much more smarter, much richer in terms of the capabilities and things like that. Mobile today is a lifestyle device. Today, it's your camera, your gaming platform, your commerce platform, it's of course email and connectivity platform. There's a social angle to mobile. It will be a very very important part of everyone's life.
On his personal choice of mobile phone:
I'm a technology geek. I want to try everyone. I have an iPhone, I have a Windows Mobile phone, I have a Nokia phone. Anything new comes out I try ... different places I use different phones just to be comfortable using different technologies. In the U.S., I use Samsung and Windows Mobile. In India, I'm now using iPhone. Of course on the email side, it's Windows -- it syncs with Exchange. So in India, I use iPhone, here I use the Samsung, and I have a Nokia also just as a voice phone.
On how the various phones stack up against each other:
There is not the perfect device. Everything has pluses or minuses. And we're still in search of the perfect device. That's why I use multiple devices: I'm still in search of the perfect one.
On the Microsoft CEO summit:
It's good to interact with senior leadership in different companies, to understand what they see in the economic environment today. Some of the questions you asked today about the recovery and when will they start spending money, etc. -- this is an opportunity for me to understand. It also gives us an opportunity to share our thoughts on future direction for businesses, are there fundamental changes going to happen, things like cloud computing, etc. It's a good platform to interact with CEOs.
On who he's looking forward to meeting at the summit:
It's always interesting to listen to people like Warren Buffett, of course Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer ... I'm sharing a platform with Jeff Bezos on the future of technology, and Craig Mundie.
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