Harnessing: Employability and Deployability

It was the year 1970’s, the nascent stages of IT revolution across the globe and especially in India. The mainframe monopoly had just ended and broken with robust online transaction processing available on super mini computers running multi-executive kind of operation system. The PC revolution had just begun with word processors and spread sheets available on inexpensive computers. Therefore, it was known to the world, the demand for software applications would explode and there would be opportunities for companies specializing in customized software development from a country like India. Then in 1999, the “Y2K” fear gripped the U.S. Y2K refers to the year 2000, and the concern was that much of the existing software stores information on year using only two digits; 97 instead of 1997. The fear was that when a program advanced from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000, it would behave as if the year was actually 1900, potentially disrupting a huge amount of business and scientific calculations. In 1999, U.S. companies scrambled to make their software “Y2K compliant” and they were in short supply of English speaking programmers. Enter hordes of well-trained Indian programmers who would work for a fraction of the cost of an American programmer and deliver high-quality work. When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, many software companies needed to cut costs and an easy way to do was to hire back those Indian programmers they had used in 1999. Only now, thanks to the fiber-optic cable in India, those Indian programmers never have to travel to the U.S. - they can do all their work from home / offshore.

Today, Indian IT industry has secured itself in the global IT market place and gained global acceptance as a growing hub of high quality IT services and solution providers. Despite gaining recognition for its readily available talent, broad portfolio of IT services and high customer focus, the industry has not been acknowledged as a hot bed of innovation which was been remarked as cutting edge products and IP have not emerged from India shores. Therefore, it is felt that India is still in the early stages of product innovation. However, analysts and experts are upbeat about the huge potential of growth in the IT industry in India. Nasscom strategic review report shows the current IT BPO landscape of USD 88.1 Billion (FY 2011) is expected to grow by USD 250 Billion at the end of this decade.

Being engulfed by lot of such challenges, we need to stay ahead of the competition by adding better value for money to our customers through reliable, robust, low cost and high quality products, services and solutions. Because, today's customers are more demanding than ever and no longer accept products with glitches, time delay on delivery and cost overrun.

In order to attain and maintain these factors, today's organizations must shore up and strengthen their human resources. Huge investments are being made by these companies which may vary upto US $34000 to US $110,000 per annum and the focus is also shifting towards engaging employees to understand customers' customer and becoming deployable from employable.

However, this can be mitigated extent possible by inculcating and inducting the fresh graduates through Industry and academia collaboration. i.e. Students have to be trained on emerging technologies and business areas rather than concentrating only on typical academic projects, technical and soft skills development, sheer class room lectures to application of technical knowledge, academic qualification to additional certifications, aligning curriculum to the industry expectations and by bringing industrialists/industry experts on the academic lecture hall to bring in industry trends.

To sum up, despite the unprecedented economic downturn the industry will witness sustainable growth. Companies are trying to adopt a culture that encourages innovation, embrace new trends and deliver solutions that are focused on re-engineering and transformation. As Mahatma Gandhi said, youngsters are the pillars of the nation, young are expected to join the race by honing their skills and competence.




Bibliography:
NR Narayana Murthy address at Stanford B School
Thomas L. Friedman - The World is Flat
Nasscom IT Trend Report
Wikinvest.com
Chandrakumar Raman (SPIN Chennai) Presentation