I think the actual reason is not because of .NET awesomeness, Companies in UK have always invested in Microsoft technologies. I remember back in early 2000s, UK was the only place with a great demand for VB developers. and majority of the current work being advertised, involve rewriting the existing VB applications in C#.
Use your ears. When you are based in Western Europe and call a UK number rerouted to India you have a nice lag and dumping of the voice plus the VoIP noise. This is physics, you cannot escape it, it takes time for the signal to go there and come back.
And a company that was worth 2 billion dollars with a decreasing revenue stream. As an ex employee of autonomy i can definitely say that HP made a very very big mistake.
2 billion? I think you are forgetting about their recent acquisition of Iron Mountain Digital. I would say the companies were worth 4-6 B. They still paid too much, but there is a big difference between paying 400% over value and paying 60% over value.
... Iron Mountain Digital was bought three months ago for $380M. If they were worth $2B before, they haven't doubled or tripled their worth because they spent $380M of their cash reserves.
As an ex employee of Autonomy, i must say that its actually good news for the employees. I spoke to my ex-colleagues and they sounded upbeat. Autonomy was a sweat shop. You were paid pittance and employees outside cambridge were hardly recognized. It was one of the worst companies to work for.
