Leading the Way
The IT/IteS sectors remain the shining stars of our economy, says Ramesh Loganathan

Profile
Ramesh Loganathan has over 18 years of rich experience in systems engineering and R&D leadership in product development organisations. As Vice President, Products and Centre Head at Progress Software India, Ramesh spends a significant part of his spare time in working with student startups and promoting innovation. He is a member of the NASSCOM Regional Council, and also works with NASSCOM’s National Product Forum, besides being an active member of HeadStart - which aims to create an early stage start-up support eco-system. An accomplished technologist and evangelist, he regularly speaks at tech workshops and seminars in India. Ramesh recently co-authored a book on ‘SOA approach to Integration’. He is also an Adjunct Faculty at IIIT-Hyderabad, and teaches courses on middleware technologies and research/exploratory work in the area of distributed systems.

Progress Software India
A global software company that enables enterprises to be operationally responsive to changing conditions and customer interactions as they occur - to capitalise on new opportunities, drive greater efficiencies and reduce risk. Progress Software India, Hyderabad is the second-largest development centre of Progress Software, after the headquarters at Massachusetts, USA..

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The bleak global economic outlook notwithstanding, the IT and ITeS sectors are continuing to do well and grow. These directly employ nearly two million nationwide, and are continuing to expand. With more multi-national corporations coming in, and existing ones expanding their current operations, domestic software majors also continue to grow. Property management firms’ reports indicate space uptake of millions of square feet in the past 18 months or so, and in this industry, that directly translates to jobs. Signs of growth are very clearly visible. This is despite the guarded optimism given the global economic outlook and the changing value from the IT industry in India.

TROUBLE AHEAD
The impending financial slowdown is casting a shadow on job prospects; say some experts believe. However, it is not very clear at this point as to the exact magnitude of the impact, or if there would be any impact at all. So far, the Asia-Pacific region has remained relatively unaffected so this will have a mitigating effect on the global situation. With efforts underway in Europe to manage the crisis, keeping our fingers crossed, let’s hope it will pass with relatively less impact!

ALL’S WELL AT HOME?
Talking specifically about India, as an economy, we are more shielded given that most of our economic activity is within the country - we produce and consume locally, and this will not change should there be another recession. However, the IT/ITeS industry is largely dependent on clients from the major world economies, so there may be some impact on this industry. But that’s not the end of the road; a silver lining here is that over the past few years, domestic IT consumption has also increased significantly. The government is investing a lot on e-governance initiatives and the private sector is also rapidly expanding their IT investment.

Most indications are there may be 15% growth - and that will mean 15% additional headcount.

As the industry matures, some clear shifts are beginning to show. Gone are the days of easy jobs, global travels, overseas assignments, and changing jobs just for a raise in compensation. Pressures on efficiency and value are bound to increase. We have to constantly work on innovating and delivering higher value to the group, company, and customers. Change will be constant, and in this environment, youngsters will need to stay abreast of relevant technology developments to ensure value. Two areas this manifests itself are, higher value consulting/solutions, and IP lead products.

IT services majors are actively seeking entry into high-end consulting and value-added Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), while the ITES industry is getting into technology and domain knowledge-enabled BPO services. A strong push overall towards IP and products is also visible.

The increasing domestic IT consumption is a major catalyst for these shifts through the opportunity it brings for end-to-end solutions and IP-led products. All this needs a complete solution-oriented view, good domain perspective, a good understanding of the customer, strong analytical skills, and very savvy communication and customer interaction skills.

NEW VISTAS
The bigger opportunity, though, is surely in the software products’ space. It is absolutely a good time for youngsters to start startups by themselves; especially as it is not capital intensive but is more dependent on innovation and new ideas.

This is the future for the IT industry in India. Services will slowly mature, and growth will taper. Added to this, as our cost structures go up, the profitability will reduce, making it imperative that as an industry we move up the value chain. The best way to counter this would be to build our own IP and products. This trend has clearly started. Many young professionals are quitting plush jobs to pursue interesting product or business ideas. Academic institutions are actively embarking on incubation programmes and entrepreneurship development cells, encouraging research faculty and students to take up product start-ups. Industry bodies (like NASSCOM and ITsAP) and organisations like TiE and HeadStart are actively nurturing and encouraging start-ups. Angel networks are beginning to come forward for the funding initiatives (like the Indian Angel Network, Mumbai Angels, and Hyderabad Angels). In the coming years, we will see a lot of traction in this space.

CHANGES
In these shifting industry expectations, graduates looking at this industry must have something beyond 'just having completed a degree'. On one hand, competition for jobs is increasing with the burgeoning supply side (increasing number of engineering and MBA colleges), and at the same time the industry has also become much more value conscious. To land a job in this environment, graduates need to differentiate themselves beyond their education performance. The must take on additional projects and show initiative beyond what is minimally expected from their academic programmes. As we move up the value chain, the new generation joining the industry must be clear that there are no free rides. While good grades and marks are important, this is by no means sufficient.

There should be initiative shown in the course. Proven learning ability, beyond what marks show, is a very important aspect. Additional or interesting projects are a key part of this, and in addition to these, we can’t miss the importance good soft skills. It would be beneficial for the students to do more stuff voluntarily, take on projects, and build their practical knowledge base. They should definitely take up meaningful internships and try doing projects with industry or work on a project in the college's entrepreneurship cell.

A key strategy is to stay abreast of relevant technology developments in the industry and be innovative. After all, for a fat pay cheque, one has to stand apart from the crowd.

Today, India is almost at par with global standards, and the industry wouldn’t be doing so well if we were not delivering well! In IT, as a software development space, we are extremely competitive. We deliver world-class capabilities at a lower cost in end-to-end solutions (concept to delivery), but in the products space, we are just starting. This is both the opportunity and the need (to ensure we don’t run around as our costs go up).

Graduating students must take note of this shifting opportunity and leverage this next wave; both taking jobs in these emerging segments of IT, and more importantly, being the change agents by themselves embarking on entrepreneurial ventures on the strengths of their ideas and innovation.