Part 1: How technology will transform various services?

Amit Midha, president, Dell, Asia Pacific & Japan in a conversation with Thomas George, head of CyberMedia Research(CMR), Anil Chopra, group editor of CIOL & PCQuest and Ibrahim Ahmad, group editor of Voice&Data explains why IT infrastructure is no longer a cost center, but a source of innovation.

Excerpts:

While the IT industry in India is bursting at capacity at present, by 2040, we see its leverage spreading not only in the corporate, but also start-ups and the society at large.

Today, we are seeing a quantum jump in capabilities in terms of skilled resources; strategies in terms of technologies deployed, automation and architectural backbone to support the demand.

And the momentum has to continue. Take the average life span on an S&P for instance. The life span has taken a vast leap from 67 years for the S&P 500 companies in 1920s to about 15-20 years today. This signifies a very vital point:

Nothing is finite—without appropriate technology to support customer experience, your brand that you so lovingly nurtured over the years is no longer your safety shield.

Technology today has fostered scalability, demand aggregation and made customer acquisition easy, and has also reduced the cost for customer support. All these will have a significant impact on the services industry.

Take for instance the healthcare services industry.

Amit Midha, President, Dell, Asia Pacific and Japan

The technologies deployed by various healthcare and wellness clinics have reduced the complexity of patient healthcare. For example, predictive analysis at maternity homes do not only enables doctors and family members to predict the duration of the stay of the mother and the new born, but also reduces the hospital bills significantly.

Similarly, the pharma industry which is growing at a phenomenal rate each year, will see transformation of the doctor's role who will have to study and analyze data just like a data scientist to provide accurate information about changes in lifestyle, medicines or any other for accurate healthcare and a better outcome.

Such disruptions are transforming the entire services industry. Therefore, investments on the IT infrastructure should not be considered a cost but a source of innovation; a source for new business models.

So in the next 20 years, the opportunities and outcomes of tech implementations will be measured not just in percentages, but in 10x or 20x. Change is inevitable. It is therefore, upto the CXOs in the services industry how fast they are able to adapt to these changes, and prepare themselves for the umpteen opportunities in the future.

Changes are going to happen faster and faster and companies have to respond to it.

Click here to read the second part of the interview.