Best practices in software engineering: does anybody in industry or academia care?

In 1991, Motorola became one of the first companies to establish a software center in Bangalore, India. The plan, at the time, was to investigate whether or not it was possible to build an organization from the ground up to develop software using the processes and best practices being promoted by the Software Engineering Institute. Within 2 years, that goal was realized when the Motorola India Electronics, Ltd. (MIEL), became one of the first groups ever to be assessed at SEI CMM Level 5. Today, MIEL has grown to over 1500 software engineers having achieved CMMI Level 5 SCAMPI in 2003. Motorola´s Global Software Group, in fact, numbers over 4500 software staff with over 90% working in a Level 4 or 5 organization.