Few MCA students and I were having a talk in the premises of our Institute. These were final year students and were about to go for placements in just couple of months. There was a heated up argument within the students about what should be their career line for MCA students. What are the technologies that they should learn or focus on? In other words the students were serious about their career. The argument made me think that what will be the future of IT industry beyond the horizon of 2017.
After researching into the topic I understood one thing and that the industry is getting itself ready by embracing a product mindset and is showing inclination towards taking risks. However, it is still bit difficult to answer this question of the deciding of IT industry’s fate for next five years at least.
If we study Indian IT industry then we can say that they have learnt a big lesson for not being witty on the technological change. However, they have understood their mistake lately and have started the damage control for the same. The major players in the industry are now having artificial intelligence and cognitive computing as future of this industry.
The government has also decided to boost the sector and has taken following steps
- Mr Ravi Shakar Prasad, Minister of Communication and Information Technology, announced plan to increase the number of common service centres or e-Seva centres to 250,000 from 150,000 currently to enable village level entrepreneurs to interact with national experts for guidance, besides serving as a e-services distribution point.
- The Government of Telangana has signed an agreement with network solutions giant Cisco Systems Incorporation, to cooperate on a host of technology initiatives, including Smart Cities, Internet of Things, cybersecurity, education digitisation of monuments.
- The Railway Ministry plans to give a digital push to the India Railways by introducing bar-coded tickets, Global Positioning System (GPS) based information systems inside coaches, integration of all facilities dealing with ticketing issues, Wi-Fi facilities at the stations, super-fast long-route train service for unreserved passengers among other developments, which will help to increase the passenger traffic.
- The Pune Smart City Development Corporation (PSCDCL) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the European Business and Technology Centre (EBTC), which will allow it to gain access to real-time knowledge of technologies, solutions and best practices from Europe.
- The e-Tourist Visa (e-TV) scheme has been extended to 37 more countries thereby taking the total count of countries under the scheme to 150 countries.
- Department of Electronics & Information Technology and M/s Canbank Venture Capital Fund Ltd plan to launch an Electronics Development Fund (EDF), which will be a ‘Fund of Funds’ to invest in ‘Daughter Funds’ which would provide risk capital to companies developing new technologies in the area of electronics, nano-electronics and Information Technology (IT).
- The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has entered into a partnership with private companies, including Tata Motors Ltd, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and real-estate firm Hubtown Ltd, to open three Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), through public-private partnership (PPP), at Nagpur, Ranchi and Pune.
- Government of India is planning to develop five incubation centres for ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) start-ups, as a part of Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi’s Digital India and Startup India campaign, with at least two centres to be set up in rural areas to develop solutions for smart agriculture.
- The Government of India has launched the Digital India program to provide several government services to the people using IT and to integrate the government departments and the people of India. The adoption of key technologies across sectors spurred by the ‘Digital India Initiative’ could help boost India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by US$ 550 billion to US$ 1 trillion by 2025@@.
- India and the US have agreed to jointly explore opportunities for collaboration on implementing India’s ambitious Rs 1.13 trillion (US$ 16.58 billion) ‘Digital India Initiative’. The two sides also agreed to hold the US-India Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Working Group in India later this year.
- The Government of Telangana has begun construction of a technology incubator in Hyderabad—dubbed T-Hub—to reposition the city as a technology destination. The state government is initially investing Rs 35 crore (US$ 5.14 million) to set up a 60,000 sq ft space, labelled the largest start-up incubator in the county, at the campus of International Institute of Information Technology-Hyderabad (IIIT-H). Once completed, the project is proposed to be the world’s biggest start-up incubator housing 1,000 start-ups.
- The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) plans to start a digital literacy programme, aimed at training over six crore Indians in the next three years to empower them for digital inclusion.
There are few more avenues which are needed to taken care of by the IT industry.
- You need to focus on quality more.
- Fragmentation into specialist organizations.
- An increase in staff working from home.
- The difficulties with traffic and infrastructure mean that there are significant advantages for organizations that allow employees to work from home. However staff will be required to use software to track their time and productivity.
- An increase in startup activity. Top level developers will consider the option of creating their own startup, and the startup community will flourish.
- Indian developers accessing online degrees and free courses online from US universities. It is possible to study online from MIT for free. The future will be full of self-taught individuals who availed of all of the freely available course materials to educate themselves.
India is the topmost offshoring destination for IT companies across the world. Having proven its capabilities in delivering both on-shore and off-shore services to global clients, emerging technologies now offer an entire new gamut of opportunities for top IT firms in India. Social, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) are collectively expected to offer a US$ 1 trillion opportunity. Cloud represents the largest opportunity under SMAC, increasing at a CAGR of approximately 30 per cent to around US$ 650-700 billion by 2020. The social media is the second most lucrative segment for IT firms, offering a US$ 250 billion market opportunity by 2020. The Indian e-commerce segment is US$ 12 billion in size and is witnessing strong growth and thereby offers another attractive avenue for IT companies to develop products and services to cater to the high growth consumer segment.