Information technology in India

From Information technology in India is an industry consisting of two major components: IT

Services and business process outsourcing (BPO). The sector has increased its contribution to
India's GDP from 1.2% in 1998 to 7.5% in 2012.
[1]
According to NASSCOM, the sector aggregated
revenues of US$100 billion in 2012, where export and domestic revenue stood at US$69.1 billion
and US$31.7 billion respectively, growing by over 9%.
[1]

Information technology is playing an important role in India today & has transformed India's image from a slow
moving bureaucratic economy to a land of innovative entrepreneurs.
The IT sector in India is generating 2.5 million direct employment.India is now one of the biggest IT capitals of the
modern world and all the major players in the world IT sector are present in the country.
[2]

The major cities that account for about nearly 90% of the sector's exports
are Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Noida, Mumbai and Pune. Bangalore is
considered to be the Silicon Valley of India because it is the leading IT exporter.
[3][4]
Exports
dominate the industry and constitute about 77% of the total industry revenue. However, the domestic
market is also significant with a robust revenue growth.
[1]
The industrys share of total Indian exports
(merchandise plus services) increased from less than 4% in FY1998 to about 25% in FY2012.
According to Gartner, the "Top Five Indian IT Services Providers" are Tata Consultancy
Services, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro and HCL Technologies.
[5]

Regulated VSAT links became visible in 1994.
[6]
Desai (2006) describes the steps taken to relax
regulations on linking in 1991:
In 1991 the Department of Electronics broke this impasse, creating a corporation called Software Technology Parks
of India (STPI) that, being owned by the government, could provide VSAT communications without breaching its
monopoly. STPI set up software technology parks in different cities, each of which provided satellite links to be
used by firms; the local link was a wireless radio link. In 1993 the government began to allow individual companies
their own dedicated links, which allowed work done in India to be transmitted abroad directly. Indian firms soon
convinced their American customers that a satellite link was as reliable as a team of programmers working in the
clients office.
Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) introduced Gateway Electronic Mail Service in 1991, the 64
kbit/s leased line service in 1992, and commercial Internet access on a visible scale in 1992.
Election results were displayed via National Informatics Centre's NICNET.
The Indian economy underwent economic reforms in 1991, leading to a new era of globalization and
international economic integration. Economic growth of over 6% annually was seen during 1993-
2002. The economic reforms were driven in part by significant the internet usage in the country. The
new administration under [[Atal Bihari Vajpayee] 1999 govt pm]which placed the development of
Information Technology among its top five priorities formed the Indian National Task Force on
Information Technology and Software Development.
Wolcott & Goodman (2003) report on the role of the Indian National Task Force on Information
Technology and Software Development:
Within 90 days of its establishment, the Task Force produced an extensive background report on the state of
technology in India and an IT Action Plan with 108 recommendations. The Task Force could act quickly because it
built upon the experience and frustrations of state governments, central government agencies, universities, and the
software industry. Much of what it proposed was also consistent with the thinking and recommendations of
international bodies like the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Telecommunications Union (ITU),
andWorld Bank. In addition, the Task Force incorporated the experiences of Singapore and other nations, which
implemented similar programs. It was less a task of invention than of sparking action on a consensus that had
already evolved within the networking community and government.
"The New Telecommunications Policy, 1999" (NTP 1999) helped further liberalize India's
telecommunications sector. The Information Technology Act 2000 created legal procedures for
electronic transactions and e-commerce.
Throughout the 1990s, another wave of Indian professionals entered the United States. The number
of Indian Americans reached 1.7 million by 2000. This immigration consisted largely of highly
educated technologically proficient workers. Within the United States, Indians fared well in science,
engineering, and management. Graduates from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) became
known for their technical skills. The success of Information Technology in India not only had
economic repercussions but also had far-reaching political consequences. India's reputation both as
a source and a destination for skilled workforce helped it improve its relations with a number of world
economies. The relationship between economy and technologyvalued in the western world
facilitated the growth of an entrepreneurial class of immigrant Indians, which further helped aid in
promoting technology-driven growth.
Recent development[edit]
The economic effect of the technologically inclined services sector in Indiaaccounting for 40% of
the country's GDP and 30% of export earnings as of 2006, while employing only 25% of its
workforceis summarized by Sharma (2006): "Today, Bangalore is known as the Silicon Valley of
India and contributes 33% of Indian IT Exports. India's second and third largest software companies
are headquartered in Bangalore, as are many of the global SEI-CMM Level 100 Companies."
[citation
needed]
Numerous IT companies are based inMumbai, such as TCS (among India's first and
largest), Reliance,
[disambiguation needed]
Patni, LnT Infotech, Myzornis Corporation and i-Flex.
Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), the capital of Kerala state, is the foremost among the Tier II
cities that is rapidly growing in terms of IT infrastructure. As the software hub of Kerala (more than
80% of the state's software exports are from here
[citation needed]
), comparisons have been drawn
between Trivandrum and Bangalore. Major campuses and headquarters of companies such
as Infosys, Oracle Corporation, IBS Software Services and UST Global are located in the city. India's
biggest IT company Tata Consultancy Services is building the country's largest IT training facility in
Trivandrumthe project is worth INR10 billion and will have a capacity of 10,000 seats. The
completion of the facility is expected in 2014 or 2015.
[7]


On 25 June 2002, India and the European Union agreed to bilateral cooperation in the field of
science and technology. A joint EU-India group of scholars was formed on 23 November 2001 to
further promote joint research and development. India holds observer status at CERN, while a joint
India-EU Software Education and Development Center will be located in Bangalore.
[citation needed]

Major IT Hubs[edit]
Rank

Description
1 Bangalore Popularly known as the Silicon Valley of India and leading software exporter
from India. Bangalore is considered to be a global information technology hub of
India.
2 Chennai
Chennai is the second largest exporter of IT and ITES of India, and is the BPO
hub of India.
[8]
Chennai has the largest operations centers of TCS, and Cognizant.
3 Hyderabad
Hyderabad is a major IT hub in India which is also known as Cyberabad which
consists of many Multinational corporation companies such
as Google,Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle and Electronic
Arts, AT&T,Deloitte etc.
4 Mumbai
The Financial capital of India, but recently many IT companies have established
offices.
5 Delhi
The National Capital Region comprising Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida are clusters
of software development.
6 Pune
Major Indian and International Firms present in Pune. Pune is also C-DAC
headquarters.
7 Kolkata The city is a major back-end operational hub for IBM, Deloitte.
8 Bhubaneswar
The capital city of Odisha, an emerging IT and education hub, is one of India's
fastest developing cities.
9 Thiruvananthapuram
The capital of Kerala, now houses all major IT companies including Oracle, TCS,
Infosys, and contributes in IT export of India.
Employment[edit]
This sector has also led to massive employment generation. The industry continues to be a net
employment generator - expected to add 230,000 jobs in FY2012, thus providing direct employment
to about 2.8 million, and indirectly employing 8.9 million people.
[1]
Generally dominant player in the
global outsourcing sector. However, the sector continues to face challenges of competitiveness in
the globalized and modern world, particularly from countries like China and Philippines.
India's growing stature in the Information Age enabled it to form close ties with both the United
States of America and the European Union. However, the recent global financial crises has deeply
impacted the Indian IT companies as well as global companies. As a result hiring has dropped
sharply, and employees are looking at different sectors like the financial service,
telecommunications, and manufacturing industries, which have been growing phenomenally over the
last few years.
[9]
India's IT Services industry was born inMumbai in 1967 with the establishment of
Tata Group in partnership with Burroughs.
[10]
The first software export zone SEEPZ was set up here
way back in 1973, the old avatar of the modern day IT park. More than 80 percent of the country's
software exports happened out of SEEPZ, Mumbai in 1980s.
[11]


FUTURE OUTLOOK:
[12]
[edit]
The Indian IT market currently focuses on providing low cost solution in the services business of
global IT. Presence of Indian companies in the product development business of global IT is very
meagre, however, this number is slowly on the raise. US giants that outsource work to India, do not
allocate the high end SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) processes like requirement analysis,
high level design and architectural design, although some Indian IT players have enough
competency to take up and successfully complete these high level software jobs. The other
prominent trend is, IT jobs, that were earlier confined to Bangalore, are slowly starting to experience
a geographical diffuse into other cities like Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune. The growth is not fast
paced, this, can be largely attributed to the lethargic attitude of the government in providing proper
telecommunication infrastructure. The penetration levels are higher for mobile, but, the speed at
which the backbone infrastructure works (network speed) and the coverage it offers are far below
what other countries of the world have currently in offer.
The Indian Advantage[edit]
The above listed views might possibly work against Indias dream to become the biggest contributor
to world IT business, but, if there is one factor that is particular only to India, and, the one that can
nullify all negative factors lined up against it, would be, the volume of young, English speaking talent
pool that India has got to offer. This number far exceeds, any other country can generate in the
coming years. It cannot be denied that China is gearing up to reduce the English fluency gap, but, at
the same time, doing it with ease like India, is a topic of debate (Live mint report, 2013). Areas of
Improvement The number of skilled management professionals is less in India, although the inverse
trend is true for skilled non-management professionals. With Indian IT companies, looking for big
global business and mergers, the culture of innovation amongst its top officials is still not in par with
their global counterparts like Google, Microsoft etc. The other area in which Indian IT requires
improvement, is, optimal utilization of its workforce, in most of the top Indian companies, employees
are often underutilized and the job requires familiarity with standard platforms like Java, Visual basic
more than engineering expertise. However, most of the associates being recruited are from
engineering background and often find the job monotonous and less cumbersome, which is again a
reason for high attrition rates in top Indian IT firms.
From Services to Product Orientation[edit]
The migration of Indian IT companies to mainstream product development is not happening any time
in the near future, this, primarily can be attributed to the fact that was discussed in earlier section,
which is, lack of innovation culture amongst the top hierarchy of the firm, and, less availability of
skilled management graduates in the country. However, what might possibly happen is, global
multinationals that are currently outsourcing services and back office jobs to India, might outsource
more of higher level jobs in SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) like requirement analysis and
architecture design. The other opportunity is, Indian subsidiaries of global multinationals might take
up significant chunk of the product development than what they are currently doing, this , however, is
not happening currently because, the global IT firms are still not comfortable in working out a way to
extract high end work from Indian companies.
Research and Development- The new drivers[edit]
The research in the industry was earlier concentrated towards programming technologies like Java,
in the recent times, the research focus changed towards technologies like mobile computing, cloud
computing and software as a service. This shift is attributedto preference of clients towards the
ubiquitous computing over standalone computing and the growing demand for low cost computing
solutions.
Criticisms[edit]
Despite its rapid growth, the Deban industry in India has attracted its fair share of criticism. This is
primarily leveled against the industry's excessive political influence - as articulated through its
association, NASSCOM - which, it is claimed, far exceeds its economic contribution to the
country.
[13]
This has allowed the industry to secure the support and resources of the Indian state
ahead of other sectors of the national economy where the developmental returns would be
greater.
[14]

See also[edit]
Technopark, Trivandrum
Technocity, Thiruvananthapuram
Supercomputing in India
HITEC City
List of IT companies in India
PARAM