Recession fuels innovation in IT sector, say experts

The economic downturn has offered an opportunity to the IT industry in India to evolve innovative strategies and overcome the weak links of the industry.

This was stated by the veterans of the IT industry at Envision 2009, a national level seminar on IT Leadership Strategies: Preparing for the Recovery, organized by the Xavier Institute of Management-Bhubaneswar (XIMB).

AL Jagannath, general manager (marketing) of Sun Microsystems said, “The recession has fuelled innovation in the IT sector in the country. IT firms are now adopting innovative and upcoming strategies like cloud computing and virtualization which enable an agile business.”

“The recession in a way has made the IT industry much stronger by removing the weak links from the industry. IT leaders shall now concentrate on economic matters and develop the different strategies for different scenarios in advance”, said Gopal Krishna Nayak, director, International Institute for Information Technology (IIIT)-Bhubaneswar.

Speaking on the occasion, Vivek Sahoo, business development manager, Rural Shores, a Bangalore-based BPO (business process outsourcing) stressed on the need for a relatively new concept called rural off shoring and termed it a tool of strategic innovation.

Presently, our country has cost advantage over services provided by the other outsourcing destinations like Philippines and China, but that is not there to stay forever, thus pushing for the need for next edge of outsourcing to rural areas, said Sahoo.

Manoj Panda, centre head, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said, reorganization of the businesses into various categories can help to reduce cost components and enable utilization of human resources in a better manner.

“The next wave of IT growth will come from Tier-II cities like Bhubaneswar. In times of recession, the focus shall be on growth of strategic business units and utilization of HR and technological tools”, he added.

Bipin Pendhyala, vice-president and site manager, CA India Technology Centre-Hyderabad stressed on the need for finding out the ways for increasing operative margins and leveraging upon the sunk costs.

The customers want companies to do more for less and the companies are trying to meet this requirement by moving from continuous improvement to evolutionary innovation and ultimately to breakthrough innovation, he said.