A Learning Curve: Last Decade

Asoke K. Laha,
President & MD,
Interra IT

At the beginning, let me offer a Very Happy New Year to the readers of VARIndia and my column. 

As we usher in a new decade, there are lots of expectations to be fulfilled, dreams to be achieved and errors to be corrected. The last decade manifested itself in multifarious spectacular developments in varied areas with widespread adoption of technology in every facet of life. 

Android-powered smartphones were born. With the implementation of 3G networks, data transfer increased to mind-boggling speed. The leading chip manufacturers designed hi-end chips like Dual Core that brought down the size and cost while making them faster. The decade saw a rapid evolution and change in technologies, thanks to rising consumer demand. 

The start of the decade had seen the destruction of World Trade Center and thereafter the world economy passed through a bad phase of meltdown with the crash of Dot Com. Things looked up and again the ghost of economic slowdown came back to haunt us at the end of the decade, though finally it ended on a somewhat positive note. 

In India, the last decade witnessed a massive spending both by the government and the private sector to build the ICT infrastructure. The Government of India initiated e-governance in all the government departments to improve the delivery of Government to citizen services and increase efficiency. State Wide Area Networks, Service Delivery Gateways and eforms, State Data Centers have already been rolled out in various states as part of the national e-governance plan. Implementation of smart grids will result due to Accelerated Power Development and Reforms (APDR). This will see an unprecedented use of ICT in the power sector.   

From railways to postal departments to municipalities, the widespread use of ICT in government departments that was started in the last decade will gain further momentum in this new decade.

The private sector too has geared up for the change. The adoption of IT to strengthen their business process was started at the start of the decade by large enterprises and gradually by the end of the decade small and medium enterprises also have started to implement IT by understanding the long-term benefits. 

The downward spiralling of implementation costs fuelled by SaaS, virtualization and versions tailor-made for the SMEs along with cheaper and better reliable hardware have helped SMEs in their endeavour for embracing Information Technology. 

The last decade was quite remarkable for InterraIT in trying to cope with a new set of emerging realities in life and technology. While we acquired new logos, we also took care of our old clients and added value to ongoing services. The areas requiring our considerable focus have been mobile applications, cloud applications in the global market. In India, we have been busy working in process control and automation along with helping some of the largest railways around the globe with implementation of IT systems to streamline some of their mission-critical processes and actively involved in outsourced product development for independent software vendors (ISVs). 

The area of e-governance is another vertical for SMEs in IT in India to service and address in an innovative way. The social concern sector has been witnessing a phenomenal growth in both money and commitment terms for companies like us to offer services and products to the communities and people. E-portals are made and countrywide network created to sustain the dream of growth and meaningful development in the right direction.