'India has become the hallmark, the gold standard for quality?'

Indian software has been able to rise to the quality challenge, akin to the Japanese who transformed themselves from producers of low quality goods to the best quality. Where exactly would you place Indian software now on the quality ladder?

We started the journey at the point where India was considered the base for cheap products, low cost and low quality. The IT industry had to establish that we are distinct and different. The attempt was to show not only that we are as good as the best but even better.

Today India has become the hallmark for quality. It is what you might consider the gold standard for quality. I actually heard a customer tell someone from another country which I won't name, 'you are making a good proposition, your cost is attractive, you seem to say you can do better than India, but can you give me India quality'?

It is a matter of some satisfaction that not only is Indian work of very high quality but in many many cases the Indian operations of an MNC are at a higher quality rating than their home operations.

So where do we go from here?

Two things. One, we have to make sure we maintain our writ on quality, particularly vis-a-vis competitors or possible competitors. Second is the focus of the Bangalore summit: What beyond CMM?

What are the new kinds of benchmarks we need to look at and what can we do beyond the present to make sure that the quality we deliver to customer continues to be outstanding at the next level?

How to become a Toyota - indisputably the best in quality "" in software?

Without sounding too self-congratulatory, I think in the IT space we are recognised as being the top. The challenge is how to stay on top and, more important, how to continue to climb so as to keep or increase the distance from our nearest competitor.

Once you set your quality standards right, the next thing global leaders typically do is establish their own processes which are thereafter copied by everybody else.

That is exactly what we have been mulling over for some time. The next step for us is not just going up further in terms of quality but taking the next jump where we set standards.

Today an Indian company will tell you with great pride that we are CMM Level V, CMMI or Six Sigma or whatever. None of these are standards we have set, these are standards we have met.

In a sense we are not the leaders because we don?t set the standards. It could be set by some university or industry. You know Six Sigma came substantially out of Motorola and GE.

Is setting a standard and establishing a process the same thing?

It would be pretty much the same as most of the standards are now related to processes. When you set the processes right the standard is based on checking each element of a process.

What are the hurdles in the way of taking the next few steps?

One is interactions with the academic community. So far, for a variety of reasons, this has been minimal. In trying to understand processes and create standards, you have to have a framework that goes back to the academic understanding, the theory.

Which is why the first software standards, CMM, came out of Carnegie Mellon University. I think it is the academic collaboration that has to create the standard.

Stanford saw a cluster grow up around it. We have a cluster but now we have to put a Stanford in the middle of it.

Very well put graphically. In the US a lot of this grew as clusters around Stanford and MIT. We have willy nilly grown the clusters "" actually they have grown by themselves "" and now we have to find or create a Stanford in its midst.

In a metaphorical sense, because it could be a university or institution but it could well be industry folks so inclined to create the core of theoretical understanding and academic depth.

This should take us to the next logical step. We handle processes very well but obviously the next step has to be creation of technology. That ties up with the academic enabling, doesn't it?

Absolutely, because innovation round the world comes out of very creative urges which really emanate from small startups which have strong linkages with the academic community. It is Route 128 or Stanford or whatever.

That is one academic challenge. The other is to mass produce graduates of the right quality.

This is the critical one. We are going right round the country to see how we can increase the industry, academia interface so as to take this forward.

This is a necessary but not sufficient condition to create this kind of urge to get out of mass producing graduates and creating guys who are a little more creative, with the kind of problem solving abilities that go beyond saying, give me a problem and I will put the equation and then do it.

My own experience in business school 30 years back was that most of the engineers used to flunk in the quantitative methods paper. That paper was not about solving an equation - that was the last part of it - it was formulating the problem. It meant understanding holistically what is the problem, then putting it in quantitative terms and then solving it.

For this you would need to redefine curricula and train teachers.

This is exactly what we are doing. One, we are examining the curricula changes required. Two, we are looking at what kind of orientation or training the faculty needs to get this done.

We are telling the industry, since you can help to define the curriculum, you can also run workshops for the faculty in the industry. We have started this in a small way. Third, and a much more serious medium term problem, where is the faculty itself to come from. Nobody wants to get into teaching. So we are focussing on what to do to get more people to do masters and PhD, get more enthusiasm into the teaching profession and attract better people into teaching.

The security issue is bugging the entire industry. Can you build a conceptual bridge between security and quality?

Very much so. The reason why our security "" despite these unfortunate things that have cropped up one after the other "" is higher than others' in a comparative sense is because we have strong quality frameworks. The framework depends on processes which are repeatable and traceable. Quality means being able to repeat a process time and time again.

It also requires you to trace when an error happens. These very same features enable you to trace anyone who steps out of line. Someone calling a particular number repeatedly, or taking longer than normally necessary for that transaction immediately tells you that the process is seeing a deviation. Once people understand they can be traced, then even that small number who have a criminal intent will be deterred.

What are the special quality issues in product development?

There are two or three issues. One, how do you stimulate product development. That comes through what we have talked about like innovation, change in curriculum and of course an ecosystem from angel funding to marketing. The other aspect is, as you begin to get some products, in the pipeline or the concept stage, it is critical for the product to succeed and you build in quality from the concept stage.

It can't be factored in post facto. It is either not possible or extremely expensive.

Then, once you have the product, it has to be of high quality standing. So things like bugs and those issues that come up in terms of repeatability are minimised.

Lately we have been seeing a lot of traction in testing. That, as an integral part of development comes back to quality as a loop, doesn't it?

Quality and testing are two sides of the same coin, in one way.

That business segment is growing.

Doing very well. Our high quality standards enable us to automatically be at some advantage with regard to doing the kind of testing that is in great demand internationally.

So what is your overarching thought?

In the context of quality, I would say that we are now trying to make sure that Brand India, which has moved beyond costs and moved to factors like productivity, encompasses quality as an integral part of what it is.

Most people recognise it but we want Brand India to represent all these together, the PQRS brand of India which represents productivity, quality, reliability and skills. We now talk of security as an additional part of it.