Techno thrills and shocks of 2009

MUMBAI, INDIA: As the world gets ready to welcome the new year, it's important to look back at 2009, which witnessed some of the major events and issues surrounding India's IT and Telecom industry.

For Indian IT sector, the year 2009 did kick off on a low note amidst the global economic recession – the impact of which was visible from Wall Street to Dalal Street.

The recession severely impacted IT services and software companies that saw decline in demand and foreign revenues, forcing them to change their business and pricing models. While back home, the Satyam scam was turning out to be the worst case scenario for India.

However, the fourth largest IT services and solution company was saved thanks to the government intervention and the takeover by Tech Mahindra, which christened Satyam as Mahindra Satyam.

Amid such weak business scenario, the IT industry turned to the Central government to get bailouts, but it couldn't do much in terms of rescuing the IT industry, except that it continued the earlier policies and special schemes for IT businesses.

However, the general election saw Indian political parties in a new avatar with technology savvy attitude, with the addition of IT policy as one of the election agenda to woo young netizens. They launched websites, blogs, mobile and online campaigns and even appointed tech heads or chief information officers (CIOs) to manage their online presence.

As the turmoil continued there was added worries as the campaign against outsourcing to India gathered momentum. Though President Obama's Bangalore-Buffalo comment sent shock waves across the Indian IT landscape, it was short-lived and India still remained the global outsourcing destination.

New Technology

Given the situation the IT industry and businesses were facing around, there emerged the trend of using new technology concepts like virtualization, server consolidation, video-conferencing, open source software and cloud computing. The technology concepts gained much acceptance as it helped companies and businesses to save businesses operational expenses and also the IT budgets were frozen.

Though it wasn't the so-called good time for most businesses and sectors globally, the Indian IT sector managed well to get over this critical phase compared to its counter parts else where. It saw fewer job-cuts compared to US and Europe and found the middle-way by cutting salaries and also created the talent pool concept.

But as said, bad times doesn't last forever, businesses in India and globally show some light of hope. Things started to look better for Indian IT sector as business picked up again but at slower pace, the deal sizes became smaller with limited projects but at discounted rates compared to previous years.

The year's third quarter proved to be much better compared to the previous two as the IT industry showed signs of recovery with companies showcasing good quarterly performances.

New Launches

On the other side, the year witnessed launch of the much talked and awaited Microsoft's operating system Windows7, Nokia came out with N97 mobile handset to compete against Apple's iPhone. More so, India saw the rise of the USB-based high-speed Internet pen drives from large telecom companies.

While the Indian telecom industry was unruffled by the economic situation, it grew phenomenally with over a dozen GSM and half a dozen CDMA operators serving to more than 500 million subscribers. But the Telecom industry's standing demand for 3G spectrum, once again got tangled in between the government's unclear technology policy and ministerial process.

Technology has always enticed people to explore and experiment with it. And some of the major institutions and high profile personalities turned tech savvy but their attempts failed to meet desired results and were criticized.

From moon to CAT and cattle class

India's premier space and research institute, ISRO lost contact with its first and prestigious moon mission Chandrayaan after 10 months of its launch. Also, the IIM's maiden attempt to organize the common admission test (CAT) failed badly due to technical glitches and some virus attack allegations.

Interestingly, as the media was reporting on the top institutes and technological issues, top personalities including ace golfer Tiger Woods and Shashi Tharoor added some more points to debate on technology and its misuse. From 'cattle class' to 'golfer's nights out', there was enough spice that spiced up the tech world too, via Twitter.

Any ways, lets hope, in the new year, industries, institutions as well as people use technology in a way that helps not only businesses to do business smoothly and in cost effective manner but also helps people to have better lives.