Japanese Industrial Culture & Software

A decade ago Mr. Yuasa, a customer of acmet's, asked me, 'How is it that India is so good at software". My short answer to him was, "Because we are not good at anything else!" My reply was not entirely in jest.

This was my thesis, progressively strengthened over the years:
1. The large semiconductor companies that we dealt with did not value software tools (acmet developed and maintained compilers for them).
2. They made their money selling processors. Tools and their maintenance they gave away free to support sales. It was a pure cost that, if not made zero, had to be minimized. (In a way that helped us, as otherwise they would never have outsourced tool development.)
3. The top decision makers had made their careers and reputations developing, manufacturing and selling chips - drams, processors, ... The semiconductor companies had software talent but I doubt if they really had the respect of top-management.
4. Unlike what some of my colleagues believed, Japanese software talent was strong. Evidence of that was their dominance in games and in robotics.

The Jul 16th - 22nd 2011 issue of The Economist has an article titled, "Samurai go soft", with the subtitle, "Japan's preference for hardware over software is fading". Here are some quotes:

"A samurai would never write software!" barked a senior executive at one of Japan's biggest electronics firms, ....

 .. by bundling programs with machines, they taught customers that software was of little value.

 The article mentions that, among others, "Hitachi and Toshiba are hunting for software firms". I wish this had happened earlier - or acmet were still around.

In 2008, I remember, a large Japanese conglomerate was interested in investing in acmet. But then the financial melt-down happened. The rest, as they say, is history :-(