Doing things differently is key to survival: Karnik

Chinese universities and the automation where the software itself writes the software code are the two upcoming challenges in addition to cloud computing that the Indian software professionals would face, according to former Nasscom president Kiran Karnik.

However, he is optimistic they would overcome these challenges by reinventing themselves through innovation as they had done in the past when the Y2K opportunity dried up after 1999-2000.

Delivering the foundation day lecture on ‘IT: India’s tomorrow for business and the economy’ at ICFAI Business School here on Saturday, Karnik said loss of jobs on account of cloud computing was imminent. “As jobs like stenographer no longer exist, the jobs of some programers may go as outsourcing may take a big hit because of cloud,” he said.

Similarly, China is churning out a large number of software professionals in a direct competition to what the Indian IT professionals have been doing so far and at the top end they match the quality of their Indian counterparts. Software automation is one more challenge where writing the code may no more remain the exclusive domain of humans, according to him.

Now just being cheaper, better and faster would not be able to save the industry from these challenges, Karnik said.