Re-use is emerging as a new line of business for consulting practices of software companies and an important tool for improving their own productivity.
This is the direct fallout of the slowdown in investment in information technology. Companies are seeking to save on their IT budgets by locating knowledge assets lying within while investing in new development. Developers are seeking to improve their efficiencies by also reusing the knowledge assets existing within themselves.
Re-use involves any digital asset that may exist in an organisation, be it design, project methodology, or business documentation. To be able to re-use such assets a company has to have a system by which it tracks, stores and makes available such assets to developers so that they do not have to redevelop what has already been developed.
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Software companies are offering consulting services to companies in setting up their own re-use systems. Wipro and TCS are the leading players in this new line of business, says Ramakanth Desai, vice president, e-enabling solutions, of Wipro Technologies.
An important re-use customer of Wipro is Nationwide whose entire claims processing software development is being subjected to the re-use discipline. A large UK insurance company is planning to save euro 50 million in the next 2-3 years through re-use.
The potential of re-use can be gauged from the fact that 70 per cent of new applications will be pre-assembled, that is involving re-use and new assembly. This will lead to a 40 per cent reduction in development time and 20 per cent reduction in defects, estimates Desai.
Wipro expects 50-60 per cent of its solutions business to come from re-use consulting and is putting together a business group for this as part of its solutions consulting group.
This will help companies have a central group for identification, creation, maintenance and management of reusable assets. Not only will such a group require processes, there must also be organisational incentive to promote re-use. Wipro is targeting CIOs and CTOs with two services - re-use consulting and re-use programme implementation or rollout.
Globally CSC was the first significant software company to focus on re-use from 1995. Today there are global marketplaces for reusable assets such as Flashline and Component Source. And companies such as Sun Microsystems and Microsoft are promoting platforms for the development and deployment of re-use.
Re-use is the first step in the long journey that eventually ends in the development of a complete product. After there is a reusable asset, it can be developed further into a component. The next development step involves creating a framework which defines the methodology. And finally comes the entire product.
Wipro has a central repository of digital and software assets. The digital assets are the template methodologies which every business needs. The software assets begin as reusable codes and can finally end up as specific components in a business domain such as banking.