'Financial Crisis Is More A Function Of The Psyche Than Economy'

The first day of India IT 2020, a three-day event organised in Mumbai jointly by the Computer Society of India and the Bombay Management Association, portrayed varied views on the current market scenario and strategies to tackle the economic meltdown using IT. In the keynote session, speakers emphasised on continuously looking for opportunities of upturn.

Tarun Gulati, GM, Business Strategy, Marketing and Operations, Mircosoft India, said that demand for Indian IT products and services globally is almost at a flat level. Whereas India is still a growing economy and therefore holds a lot of opportunities for IT vendors. Coining the term ‘IT innovation for India, by India’ he gave some well known examples where IT has been able to foster growth of society as well as enterprises. ITC e-Choupal, Indian Railways are some leading examples of fuelling growth through innovation.

C Mohan, IBM fellow and chief scientist IBM India presented some snippets of Global Technology Outlook (GTO), which comprises IBM Research’s unique vision for the future of information technology (IT). He highlighted the importance of real-time data analytics, Internet scale data centre, multi-core processors, energy efficient data centre architecture etc. He also stressed that enterprises will deploy more mobile-based technologies in the future.

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In the business alignment session, Amit Mitra, Global Consulting head, TCS, said that a recent global survey of CIOs indicated that business process improvement was given higher priority than cost reduction. He stressed that CIOs must be completely aware of their customers and subsequent needs.

Lalit Sawhney, MD, Lalit Sawhney & Associates, clearly defined business wishes for CIOs. He mentioned that anytime, anywhere access to systems, online MIS, business analytics for new insights are the need of the hour for all kinds of businesses and CIOs must be able to meet those wishes.

In a session covering mobile technology trends, Veer Chand Bothra, a reputed mobile blogger, saw 2009 as a major year for many technological innovations including GPS devices, handheld units etc. He also stressed that enterprises like BPOs, paid cab services etc will increasingly adopt GPS technologies. Krishna Durbha, head-VAS, Reliance Communications, threw light on a self-sustaining Rs 6,000 crore VAS industry. He pointed out that small time players in Maharashtra and even Bihar were creating applications for value-added services and doing good business.

Dr Ajit Ranade, chief economist, Aditya Birla Group, while presenting the ‘Economic Outlook for India Inc’ was quite optimistic about the Indian economy. He said that the financial crisis is more an effect of psychological reasons than economic ones. He said that the impact of the crisis would be felt for six months and after that he expects the economy to bounce back.