One of the world’s largest defense contractor and air craft manufacturer, Boeing, is joining hands with a unit of India’s Tata group to test and validate a super computer to run dynamic simulations for the wings of its air crafts.

According to a press release,

Tata’s Computational Research Lab will model high-lift aerodynamic simulations in three dimensions on the Eka System, the fastest super computer in Asia, to help design and develop airplane wings.

The joint statement and the accompanying press release was quite highfalutin sounding but basically what it boils down to is that Tata’s would make use of its Eka super computer to design and test the wings. I am quite skeptical about the design part here but its a start.

Also, the press release had Boeing estimating India will need 911 planes worth $86 billion by 2027. (I don’t doubt the high estimates but, just exactly how do they arrive at a figure like “911″?! ).

Besides earning some lucrative operating margin, this assignment would definitely give bragging rights to Tata’s as well. It would go a long way in projecting a positive image of the company’s ability to under take and execute state of the art, cutting edge projects and not just run of the mill outsourced service and maintenance projects.

More details from here.

As an aside, Boeing is also angling for India’s requirement to provide for hundred plus multi role combat aircraft for the Air Force. No decision has been finalized yet but its quite apparent that Boeing, along with other companies in the fray, is involved in heavy lobbying on this front as well.

…By opening tech centers in US and hiring US talent.

Traditionally, Indian companies have focused more on either importing cheap labor from India using the skilled worker visa (a lot of them even come on Business visa and do billing but thats another story) as the statistics have shown or by totally off-shoring the job to low cost development centers back home.

In a changing trend, TCS, the largest technology services company from India plans to open a development center in a former paper plant in Cincinnati, Ohio. To staff the site, the company additionally announced it has plans to recruit about 1000 people. Talent would be primarily scouted from the mid-west. This would make it one of the largest U.S based development centers by an Indian company.

Perhaps more such examples of local hirings would help deflect some of the criticism the Indian companies have been gathering lately about ridding America of high paying tech jobs, which consequentially also resulted in less number CS major seats getting filled up in colleges.

In related news, Bill Gates recently proffered his views to a senate committee hearing about skilled worker visa reforms. Affirming his traditional position of supporting an increase in the number of such visas, Bill Gates thinks there is dire shortage of skilled manpower in America and if the country is to maintain its numero uno position, needs to act fast on this.

Read more about reverse outsourcing from an Economics Times article from here.

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My comment about Indian companies innovating is in humor. Hoping nobody takes offense.

India’s outsourcing firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) won a contract by Chrysler LLC for taking over IT work handled by separate IT service providers.

The agreement was made public recently where Tata would be responsible for a variety of IT systems at the automaker, including online vehicle ordering systems for the dealers and maintenance of the company’s dealer and brand websites. All this was divulged by the Chrysler spokesman David Elshoff.

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Close on the heels of IBM India, another heavy duty IT employer has now sacked 500 computer engineers. According to various newspaper reports, TCS has laid off 500 computer engineers for below par performance in the annual appraisal. TCS is India’s largest IT company in terms of revenue and has the highest number of software engineers in India on its pay roll.

The company may claim that the move is motivated to keep staff with better performance, but I strongly suspect that other reasons like appreciating rupee, slow down in the US economy etc. could have played a major part.

If we believe the claims made the company, the thing that would surprise me the most is, how come these supposedly “low performing” engineers were hired in the first place and in such high numbers. Last I heard, the selection process used to be pretty rigorous. Along with so many retrenched engineers, I would like to see a few corporate HR heads roll.

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