Very brief history of initial years of Baan Company outsourcing software product development work to India from 1987

Last updated on 18th December 2020

Article authors: Ravi S. Iyer, Ramanathan Subramanian and Darayus Bharucha

1. Baan Company, also known as Baan Corporation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baan_Corporation, started outsourcing software product development to India operations in 1987 [Note-1]. This matches with the 1987 year Jan Baan, founder of Baan company, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Baan, has mentioned for this work, in his upcoming (to be published in near future) autobiography book, English language version. 

2. Initially Baan company associated with the Indian software services company Datamatics Consultants Ltd., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datamatics, and started working with a team of Datamatics employees based in Datamatics SEEPZ office in Bombay/Mumbai. On ERP (Enterprise resource planning, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning) software side, Ramanathan Subramanian and Shankar Mallapur from Datamatics went (on project assignment from Datamatics) to Baan company office in Netherlands from October 1987 till February 1988. They worked on the early versions of Baan ERP software i.e. BMCS (Baan Manufacturing Control Systems). After Ramanathan and Shankar returned to Bombay, their ERP work continued in Datamatics, SEEPZ office in Bombay, with many Datamatics technical staff being added to the team in SEEPZ, Bombay. This ERP work was successful.

When the Baan ERP work done in Datamatics came to a close is not clear. Some projects did continue for a period of time and then some of the people in them moved over to Baan India.

3. Around the same time that the Baan ERP work was being done by Datamatics India team, a project of independent Graphical User Interface Window Manager library (on top of Microsoft Windows & X-Windows) was taken up where Ravi S. Iyer played the lead role. Ravi had visited Baan company's Barneveld, Netherlands office for a month or two in end 1987 at the beginning of the project [Note-2]. Later Ravi continued the work in Datamatics SEEPZ, Bombay office with the work primarily being a technical feasibility study kind of work. This project did not succeed and was terminated after a few months primarily due to the area being too new technology-wise to Ravi [Note-3]. Ravi would like to add that he had the benefit of advice from a senior technical person in Datamatics as well as consultancy advice from an IIT Bombay Computer Science professor who was advising Baan project teams in Datamatics SEEPZ office. Ravi later moved on to other projects in Datamatics unrelated to Baan company. 

4. Ramanathan Subramanian was engaged as an independent consultant by Baan in September 1988. A group of Patni Computer Systems (later acquired by IGATE), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patni_Computer_Systems , employees were working on a customisation project of Baan ERP for a client, in Patni Computer Systems office in SEEPZ (in 1988-89). Ramanathan did testing and supervision of that work. 

5. Baan company established their own India company with name "Baan Info systems India Pvt. Ltd" in 1989. Ashok Sand, another former employee of Datamatics, became General Manager of Baan India company, and Ramanathan Subramanian became Technical Manager. Both of them helped set up the Baan India company and its own office/facility in a unit in SEEPZ (in SDF V), Bombay/Mumbai [Note-4]. They hired a batch of Baan employees. Darayus Bharucha and few others, who were former employees of Datamatics, joined Baan India company in senior roles (Darayus joined Baan India in March/April 1989). By end 1989, Baan India had grown to a small team of around 15-20 employees. It started small and grew slowly as it was into product development. 

Thus by end of 1989, Baan India company had got well established in its own office in SEEPZ, Bombay with significant number of 15-20 employees (considering that it was into product development as against software services export like Datamatics and Patni Computer Systems), with this Baan India office working on Baan ERP product(s) software development.

Notes

Note-1. What is meant by "software product development" in this article? Given below are related extracts from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_Product :

Software as a product (SaaP, also programming product, software product) — is a product, software, which is made to be sold to users, and users pay for licence which allows them to use it, in contrast to SaaS, where users buy subscription and where the software is centrally hosted.

One example of software as a product has historically been Microsoft Office, which has traditionally been distributed as a file package using CD-ROM or other physical media or is downloaded over network. Office 365, on the other hand, is an example of SaaS, where a monthly subscription is required.

...

In the book The Mythical Man-Month Fred Brooks tells that when estimating project times, it should be remembered that programming products (which can be sold to paying customers) are three times as hard to write as simple independent in-house programs, because requirement to work on different situations, which increases testing efforts and documentation.[1]

[Reference:]

1. Brooks, Fred P. (1995). The Mythical Man Month (Anniversary ed.). Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-83595-9.)]

--- end wikipedia extracts ---

This article's references to 'software product' are in line with above Wikipedia extracts. The term "software product development" means development (involving work of functional requirements, architecture, design, programming, test and documentation) of such software product(s). Note that usually supporting customers who buy and use these software products is a related activity.

Further note that Jan Baan in his upcoming (to be published in near future) autobiography book, English language version, uses the term "generic software development" which we view as meaning the same as "software product development" as described above, in the context of this article.

Note-2. Baan company was based in Barneveld, Netherlands, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barneveld_(town). For lodging, Ravi S. Iyer was put up by Baan company in the same place where Ramanathan Subramanian and Shankar Mallapur were already living in Barneveld, a little distance away from the office with public bus services available from that residence to Baan office. So the three Datamatics employees on Baan project work in Netherlands stayed together for some time with Ravi returning back to India after a short stint while the others stayed on for some more time. Ravi also wanted to mention that he recalls that Baan company provided them a manual gears car (a stick-shift car) with Ravi struggling a bit to drive the stick-shift car :-) (as Ravi was used to driving only automatic gears cars based on his previous USA stint where he really learned car driving even though he had got a car driving license in Mumbai on manual gears car). This group of three Datamatics employees with Ravi as the car driver, drove from Barneveld to Amsterdam (and back) for a weekend holiday trip.

https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2018/12/documenting-my-part-auto-bio-with-pics.html has pics of Ravi S. Iyer's passport visas including his Benelux visa issued by Netherlands consulate in Bombay for Baan company project work - that is the 3rd visa pic (initial Benelux visa pic is for Ravi's 1985 Brussels assignment which was unrelated to Baan company). The visa shows a stamp of 12th Nov. 1987 which seems to be Ravi's entry date into Netherlands.

Note-3. Ravi S. Iyer benefited significantly from the exposure and knowledge he gained from this independent Graphical User Interface (GUI) Window Manager library project (more like feasibility study), as in future years he worked on GUI programming projects both on Microsoft Windows and on X-Windows.

Note-4. SEEPZ is a Special Economic Zone in Mumbai India, with liberal economic laws as compared to domestic Indian market/business areas (rest of India excluding other such special zones), and companies in them are given tax and business incentives to attract foreign investment and technology,  http://www.seepz.gov.in/ ,   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEEPZ . SEEPZ (Government of India) authorities had built some buildings with many offices in each building. Such buildings are called SDF with a number following it to identify a particular SDF building, and the offices in these buildings are called Units. SDF full form is Standard Design Factory. See INFRASTRUCTURE and SEEPZ UNITS menu-links in http://seepz.gov.in/seepz_sez.aspx for more details. 

Information technology in India Wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology_in_India , states "The first software export zone, SEEPZ – the precursor to the modern-day IT park – was established in Mumbai in 1973. More than 80 percent of the country's software exports were from SEEPZ in the 1980s.[9]" The reference 9 in this wiki extract is to: "Top 50 Emerging Global Outsourcing Cities" (PDF) [https://web.archive.org/web/20180921041909/http://www.itida.gov.eg/Documents/Tholons_study.pdf ]. www.itida.gov.eg. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 September 2018. Retrieved 22 July 2010."

[I, Ravi S. Iyer (publisher of this article), thank Wikipedia and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extract(s) from their website on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]