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Digitisation to re-define the way we knew IT

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Abhigna
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GOA, INDIA: The definition of IT is changing fast with the emergence of digitisation, and both CIOs and suppliers of IT will undergo major shifts, as per Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of Research at a press briefing.

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Being driven by substantial changes due to consumerisation and emerging changes like Cloud, Mobility etc; much will change at the supplier end, and that would mean a space beyond current IT majors. As to how CIOs will shape up to this shift, Partha Iyengar, distinguished analyst and Gartner India head of research reminded that the time lag between global changes and India side impact has only been shrinking and so it's not surprising to see India right in time as digitisation wave affects the industry. "CIOs here are grappling with same issues as their global counterparts and factors like rise of CDO (Chief Digital or Data officer) are in force here too. It is a tremendous opportunity as well as challenge for IT service providers and this is palpable in the way some tier 1 suppliers have announced strategies for the digitised world."

In response to a CIOL query, Sondergaard cleared the fog on whether users/customers will start calling the shots in this new era and resulting implications for shelf software or hardware. He argued how this is already happening with changes seen in price points of hardware, increased customer activism and role and changes with standards, processors or software design. "Everything is now shaping not just around a process but the way people work and consume. Consumers also want to have a role in areas like control of data etc."

Iyengar seconded that view adding how the power is progressively moving from a few dominant software players to one billion consumers. Talking on other topics like CIO's danger spots, he also explained that while CIOs belonging to the 'tell-me-what-to-do- or back-end breed should worry about rise of CDOs, the other category of CIOs who understand business and have a strategic lineage nevertheless should have nothing to be perturbed about. However as he rightly stressed here it's vital that some areas garner increased accountability and not run the risk of caught up in islands as CEOs hesitate from stepping up or merely point to CDOs. "Digital leadership, data architecture, security and risk, industrialised IT infrastructure ecosystem are areas of core responsibility."

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Gartner interestingly predicts that by 2017, 20 per cent of computers will be learning rather than processing and by 2020, one in three knowledge workers could be replaced by smart machines. Also notably from numbers like 0.9 billion sensors/Internet of Things and 1.6 billion personal devices in 2009, we could be coming a long way to 30 billion and 7.3 billion devices respectively in 2020.

Interestingly we still do not know who this new breed of suppliers will be. It can even be a bank selling something white-labeled to another bank or a manufacturing company selling to a software company or a player who is not even around as of today. That will also mean that erstwhile majors like IBM or Microsoft face a big challenge of re-orienting themselves well to the new rules of the game.

IT spending in India is projected to total $71.3 billion in 2014, a 5.9 percent increase from the $67.4 billion forecast for 2013, according to Gartner, Inc. IT services will record the strongest revenue growth at 12.1 per cent, Software revenue will grow 10 per cent and the telecommunication services segment, that accounts for 42.1 per cent of the Indian ICT market, is set to grow two percent in 2014.

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"The digital world is here and this results in every budget being an IT budget; every company being a technology company; every business is becoming a digital leader; and every person is becoming a technology company," emphasised Sondergard. "This is resulting in the beginning of an era: the Digital Industrial Economy. The Digital Industrial Economy will be built on the foundations of the Nexus of Forces (which includes a confluence and integration of cloud, social collaboration, mobile and information) and the Internet of Everything by combining the physical world and the virtual."

The IT market in India is the third-largest among emerging economies and the fourth-largest among developing and mature Asia/Pacific countries.

As further projected, the Indian devices market will emerge as the largest segment of IT spend in India by 2017. Growth within this segment will be driven by the sale of mobile phones which will be amongst the fastest growing sub segments within the Indian IT industry. Mobile phone revenue will total $26 billion in 2017 and will account for 76.4 percent of device revenue and 28 percent of overall IT spend in India in the year 2017.

"Mobile smart devices have taken over the technology world. By 2017, new device categories: mobile phones, tablets, and ultra-mobile PCs will represent more than 80 percent of device spending. Gartner also forecasts that by 2017, nearly half of first-time computer purchases will be a tablet. Mobile is the destination platform for all applications," added Sondergaard.