A country with a highly educated, readily available, English-speaking workforce with low labour costs and large government support for the development of a technology industry may sound familiar.
If it does, it is because it has been Ireland's main selling point for inward investment from multinational companies for a number of years.
Now though, that profile may more accurately be applied to a country thousands of miles away.
India is fast adopting the mantle of best location for inward investment from the world's technology companies and may yet pose a threat to the technology sector here.
While the Republic may satisfyingly be the largest exporter of software in the world, the statistics for India are nothing short of staggering for a country long seen as underdeveloped.
The annual growth rate of its IT software and services industry has been a consistent 50 per cent plus since 1991 and the sector had revenue of $5.7 billion (€6.8 billion)in the last financial year.
A Nasscom-McKinsey report projected revenues of $87 billion (€103.42 billion) for the Indian software industry by 2008. The key to such growth has been, much like Ireland, the attractiveness to multinational companies of a low-cost, skilled workforce.
Mr Colm Donlon, public relations and media manager for the Industrial Development Authority, said that the threat of companies based in Ireland moving their operations to India was over-hyped. The growth of the software industry there did not mean the demise of the sector here, he said.
Mr Donlon said Ireland would probably lose some elements of software production to India but there were also a number of the new Indian technology giants looking at locating software houses, or establishing joint ventures, in the Republic.
Ireland would have to move up the value chain in technology and the authority was working on increasing the value-added element of companies, Mr Donlon said.
The impressive growth in foreign direct investment in Indian high-tech companies was part of the globalisation of the software industry and a response to the need for skilled people in the sector, Mr Donlon said.
He said the growth of India as a software centre was in some ways a welcome wake-up call to some companies here that had been static in their development.
More than 185 Fortune 500 companies, or two in five multinationals, have out-sourced their software requirements to India.
In June of this year the market capitalisation of Indian software companies stood at $55 billion. In January last year the market capitalisation of the same sector was $4 billion.
India produces about 10,000 graduates a year from its technical and management institutes but that only meets about one-tenth of demand for high-tech workers there.
Mr Barry Dixon, technology analyst with Davy Stockbrokers, said India had not been proven to be a good place to do business yet whereas Ireland had been shown to be friendly towards companies and to have a good tax environment. He said he believed that as long as Ireland's wage levels stayed below those of the United States - they are about 70 per cent of US rates - US technology companies, especially software companies, would remain here.
However, Mr Dixon said India may prove attractive to some commodity companies or chip manufacturers here. Their margins are much lower than those of software houses, which often operate at a 95 per cent margin, making a labour cost difference of up to 10 per cent insignificant.
He said there would probably be some movement from Ireland but that there was enough room for both India and Ireland to cohabit in the software industry.
A spokesman for Enterprise Ireland said Ireland and India enjoyed a close relationship with regard to the software industry following the visit there by the Tanaiste, Ms Harney. He said there was a lot of co-operation and that many beneficial joint ventures between Indian and Irish companies were in the pipeline.
Ms Michelle Mahon, an executive with the Irish Software Association, said Ireland had not felt any impact from the success of India yet. If there was an impact it would be a while before the economy would be affected, she added.
She said the industry here did not see India as a threat and had worked at fostering good links with the Indian software industry and government.
Ms Mahon said many members of the Irish Software Association were looking at India with a view to outsourcing - developing software products in India for the European market before shipping them back. Indian companies saw Ireland as a valuable gateway into Europe, as many of the software operations in India were geared towards the United States, Ms Mahon said.
Regardless of whether India's growth as a software centre affects the technology industry in Ireland, there will be an increasing flow of knowledge, people and capital between India and Ireland in the years to come.
