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Careers in IT/ ITES

December 7, 2008

High school students are keen on knowing the prospects of IT/ITES careers in India. Here is my quick take

IT-ITES generates the largest number of jobs in India; currently there are 2.2 million employed in this category. 500,000 are in Karnataka alone; Government of Karnataka (GoK) employs a similar number! Considering the fact that many GoK jobs are in Class III / Class IV, IT/ITES sector is great for jobs.

The “slowdown” will impact everyone including IT/ITES; but it will eventually turn for the better; after all it is cyclical; by the time the High School graduates enter the job market (2-6 years from now), the position will indeed be good.

B Tech / MCA are the preferred qualifications. MSc / BCA / BSc too have openings. There is a confusion that IT/ITES careers are only for Math guys; while many engineers have taken to IT, it is open for others too. MP3 was inspired by music, iPod  is a design innovation; so IT is for everyone.

IT-ITES offers a variety; you can pursue M Tech / PhD and even chase a Nobel Prize / Turing Award. You can join services, grow into a project manager, have a “cool” and “comfortable” job with an attractive salary. You can turn entrepreneurial either immediately or later, and create jobs and wealth; in IT/ITES what you need is a compelling idea and NOT huge initial investment.

You can work in services companies as well as product companies; India has product companies like Infosys Finacle, iFlex, Tally, Subex, Megasoft too. There are R & D outfits like Infosys SET Labs, TCS R & D, IBM Research, Microsoft Research, HP Labs, Intel Research, Motorola research, Nokia Research..

Also there are technology & IP licensing companies like Ittiam and Sasken. There are hardware companies too.

Do remember IT-ITES has a broadband. Not all ITES, is a low end BPO. There are KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) and LPO (legal Process Outsourcing) where you as an expert provide services over a wire at very high charges ($ 100 to 300 / hour!).

IT also has services that may not need a college degree; hardware servicing, support that too in remote areas can be sought even with SSLC / Diploma

In a nutshell, you have large number of jobs, well-paying jobs, opportunities for wealth creation and jobs for people with varying qualifications SSLC to PhD. You can earn money, win laurels or create wealth; IT /ITES offers all

Best of luck!

(Career Forum organized by Bangalore University and Eduquity at Central College Auditorium in Bangalore on December 6, 200 8)

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e-Governance in India

November 29, 2008

e-Governance in India has both positive and negative elements.

First the positive ones

  • India has the largest number of “award winning” eGovernance projects (Bhoomi in Karnataka, Dhrishti in Rajasthan and e-Sewa in Andhra Pradesh, for example)
  • Indian projects have seen many innovations
  • There are projects like MCA21 (where half a million companies file their quarterly returns online), Courts computerization (judgements becoming available on the Net within 24 hours) etc.
  • Under National e-Governance Project (NeGP) Government of India has committed more than Rs 20,000 Crores
  • Under NeGP there is a proposal to set up 100,000 kiosks under Public Private Partnership

The negative ones

  • There is more emphasis on spending money than on creating value
  • The emphasis is on “e” (computerization) and NOT on governance
  • Too many “pilots” (what Prof Keniston of MIT terms as “graveyard of failed projects”)

(Keynote address in e-Governance Conference, Dayanand Sagar Institutions, Bangalore, November 27, 2008)

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IT industry employs more than 500,000 people in Karnataka

November 9, 2008

As part of the annual awards for various categories given away during IT.com (now IT.biz) every year by STPI (Software Tech Parks of India) on November 4, 2008, there was an interesting number that was talked about. It is the total number of IT professionals in Karnataka that stands at more than 500,000 today.

As an IT professional I feel proud that this nascent industry could generate so many jobs. Though small in absolute numbers for a country of 1.1 billion people it compares roughly with the number of people employed the Government of Karnataka (GoK). It become all the more interesting when one takes note of the fact that most IT forms do not employ low end labor (Janitors, peons, drivers, security staff and helpers, as these jobs are mostly outsourced) unlike the Government whose bulk of the employees constitute Class III and Class IV.

 

Also the jobs are jobs for life and globally respected; many of the professionals can be gainfully employed anywhere in the world. With proper self-learning & training most of the professionals can look to life-long employment

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SaaS waiting to happen (IET Int’l SaaS Conference in Bangalore Oct 14-15, 20008

October 16, 2008

SaaS has been around for long though in different forms.

SABRE airline reservation system that I used in my first international flight (Madras London Chicago) as early as early 70’s
SWIFT inter-bank electronic payment systems

actually delivered software solution as a dedicated service to select “agents”.

HotMail (the first web-based mail) and several web-based mail service including GMail, Yahoo Mail, Rediff or FastMail were the next instances of software delivered as service
SalesForce.com was the “iconic” SaaS offering in the past 10 years
iTunes & iPhone too made SaaS “notion” familiar to the end users
not all such “software delivery” was “architected” as SaaS applications.

SoA (Service oriented architecture) has been maturing over the years and many successful applications are getting re-architected for SaaS.

There is a “philosophy” of SaaS, there is a “business model of SaaS” (pay as you use) and the “technology” of SaaS; what this conference does is to take a balanced view of all the three aspects.

Iconic Indian companies
TCS, Ramco, Persistent, ABS, Mastek, Mindtree, Sarena and IBS

as well as MNC’s
SAP, Microsoft and Jamcracker including SalesForce.com

are presenting their work in this conference; some of them have stalls too. They represent software vendors, ISV’s (Independent Software Vendors), System Integrators (SI) and technology vendors. Of course the focus goes beyond technology to security issues as well.

With Dr FC Kohli, Former Chairman of India’s largest & oldest software services company TCS and the Mr PRV Raja, Founder & CEO of Ramco Systems - India’s best known software product company that is now re-engineering their product into SaaS offering - giving Keynote addresses, the Conference brings some of the best minds together. We should than IET team that has come all the way from London to organize this Conference in Bangalore.

(Introductory remarks as the Event General Chair for the IET International Conference on SaaS held at Grand Ashok Hotel, Bangalore during Oct 14-15, 2008)

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Infosys has 100,000+ employees today!

October 11, 2008

Along with quarterly results, Infosys also cut a huge cake marking the crossing of 100,000 employees strength on October 10, 2008!

It is a proud moment for Infosys; proud day for Indians at large

It is indeed creditable that six people with imagination, commitment and courage (and with just Rs 20,000 cash) could create an organization in India that could scale to 100,000 employees in just 27 years!

One hopes that Infosys will grow 200,000 srong in the next 5-10 years

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One more learning opportunity - Microsoft Tech Vista @ Chennai on Oct 1, 2008

October 3, 2008

Microsoft Research India organized its third edition of Tech Vista -

  • day full of outstanding talks from world’s leading computer scientists
  • upcoming & promising researchers in India (mostly PhD students) showing off their work thru “poster presentations” and 
  • a very large number of students & faculty from dozens of Institutions (both Tier I and Tier II/III) 

all assembled in Trade Center, Chennai.

The day-long festival had John Hopcroft of Cornell (NP-completeness fame), Shafi Goldwasser of MIT / Weizmann, Shree Nayar of Columbia, Rich Rashid & Rich Szeliski of Microsoft Research and our own Vijay Chandru of Strand Genomics giving in-depth talks on cutting edge technologies.

In all, it was a great event to quench one’s intellectual thirst.

Though I missed this event, select IIIT-B students had benefited fully; I could get some “gyan” today (Oct 3) during the day-long presentation to TAB (Technical Advisory Board) of which I am a Member. It was a great feeling to see the Bangalore Center managing to get so much intellectual output, thanks to Anandan & Kentaro who have built an outstanding team of 27 PhD qualified researchers in just 4 years!

  • Technology for Emerging Markets
  • Mobility
  • Algorithms
  • Rigorous software engineering
  • Cryptography and
  • Multi-lingual systems

are the key areas in whivh the researchers presented some exciting work.

All in all, MSR India is genuinely contributing to the research ecosystems in India

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Wireless in India

September 27, 2008

My views are just simple

Wireless has a great future; in fact it is “made for India” (with 38 million landline subscribers over 125 uears and 100 million over 1 year, it is clear). As my student puts it, “WWW” for India is “Wireless Will Win”

Wireless is for “aam admi” (common man)’ often we think people without college degrees are tech-averse. It is far from true. Recently I was surprised; some senior telecom executives could not demonstrate the installation of “ring tones”, but richshaw drivers could demonstrate with ease!

The real contribution of Apple iPhone and Google Android G1 would be the speed at which 3G roll-out will happen in the world. We need to prepare ourselves for that.

Finally, we need to get the “3G spectrum” mess sorted out; it cannot be left to the whims & fancies of IT Minister and the greed of Finance ministry. It is a technical decision. Let not Finance ministry look at “earning” from spectrum; let 3G roll-out be real fast and widespread; several Indians can “learn” and “earn” using the infrastructure; let government get the tax from the “earned income” of the citizens and not “short-circuit” it on the way

(Panel discussion on “Wireless Future” in the CLIK (Consortium of Electronic Industries) Conference, Ashok Hotel Bangalore on Sep 26, 200 8)

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It is official; India has more than 300 million subscribers

September 24, 2008

TRAI Press Release was out today (Sep 24, 200 8)

The total number of wireless (mobile) phone subscribers is 305+ million at the end of August 2008!

Interestingly the landline subscribe base that was 46 million in 2005 when mobile phones “crossed over” has slowly declined to 38 million today!

India is adding 300,000 subscibers a day (9 million a month in August 2008)!

Interesting times indeed

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Intel Teach Program event

July 25, 2008

It was a great experience to be with nearly 300 Principals of the various schools where Intel Teach program is active on Wednesday July 23, 2008 at RV Teachers College, Jayanagar.

 

Organized by Prerana Educators Network (President Ms Padmini being an extra-ordinary teacher & organizer), the event was well attended and organized.

 

Mr. Ashok Manoli in his keynote talked of the need to address issues of “digital divide” and “rural urban divide”.

 

Mr. Subodh Manav and Mr. Suryanarayanan of Intel were there; it is nice to see the young managers not only arranging Intel funding, but also contributing their personal time.

 

In my brief talk I brought the attention of the teachers to the fact that Intel Chairman Dr Craig Barrett was a professor at Stanford with an outstanding textbook to his credit.

 

I also urged the teachers to realize how lucky we are to be the teachers, who shape “India’s Tomorrow” (the true “IT) and how IT will be increasingly “invisible”. I also hinted to them that access (PC, network penetration), availability (reliability & costs) and affordability (costs) will NOT be an issue 5 to10 years from now. The challenge will be to engage the students in all the 4 L’s of Learning, namely, Lecture (e-Learning), Library (Digital Library), Laboratory (remote lab access like iLab) and Life. It will be possible to give “individual” attention to every student using technology (like N=1 of Professor CK Prahalad)

Using the experiment of installing ring tones where COO’s failed but the drivers succeeded, I also put at bay the “digital divide” is more of “digital dividend” (the same can be said of “rural urban divide” too.

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Karnataka Chief Minister addresses the captains of IT & BT industry

July 24, 2008

Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka Mr. Yeddyurappa addressed the CEO’s of several IT (Information Technology) and BT (Bio Technology) companies on July 23, 2008 at 8 PM over a Dinner meet.

 

He was joined by several of his cabinet colleagues (including Hon’ble IT Minister Mr. Naidu) and several senior IAS officers (including the Chief Secretary).

 

I was asked to give my opening remarks. I was a bit out of place (the only other Professor being Prof. Sharat Chandra of IISc). I used the opportunity to get across to the government that IT & BT industry have contributed a lot to the growth of Karnataka in general & Bangalore in particular.

 

There is no city in the world like Bangalore – the top 2 firms in every segment being present – HP & IBM, Intel & AMD, Microsoft & Oracle, SAP & Oracle, nVidia & ATI, TI & Intel, Samsung & LG, Siemens & ABB, Cadence & Synoptics, Philips & Samsung, Nokia & Motorola, Accenture & EDS, Microsoft & Redhat, Freescale & Infineon, and, of course, the world headquarters of Infosys & Wipro

Karnataka is No 1.

 

Yet, I also pointed out that just in the last year AP grew 40+ percent, Tamil Nadu grew 20+ percent, while Karnataka grew only 10+ percent. Companies like SAP who planned to grow only in Bangalore are growing elsewhere. It is time the government recognizes the trend, make it an inviting place and arrest the falling growth. Like human beings, industry also “want to be wanted”

 

Several eloquent speakers followed me; Kiran of Biocon and Kris of Infosys.

 

The team came on time; in fact, the CM was ahead of time. Everyone appreciated the spirit; one hopes Karnataka will be in the growth path again.

 

The CM agreed to meet 3 months later and apprise every one of the “ground level action”; it will be interesting to watch

 

 

 

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