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A Decade of Tech Ubiquity

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PCQ Bureau
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When I started in the Indian IT industry, social networking, mobile connectivity and cloud computing were unknown or, at best, esoteric terms. Technology was not pervasive and businesses were only beginning to open up to the use of computers in the workplace. A 2 GB hard drive was considered sufficient to store an organization's data and the personalization of IT was almost impossible to fathom as programming languages and protocols were complex to decipher.

Today, we are witnessing a gradual democratization of technology from being a prerogative of enterprises a decade ago, to a consumer tool that is producing remarkable innovation at the grassroots.

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When India unveiled a new Telecommunications Policy in 1999 and the Information Technology Act in 2000, thereby liberalizing India's telecommunication sector and creating the legal framework for electronic transactions in the country, few would have envisaged the impact these two would have on the economic progress of India in the last decade. The benefit of putting in place a futuristic policy framework for India's IT and telecom sector, coupled with reforms undertaken across the board can be seen in the social inclusion that it has offered to Indians in remote parts of the country. With over 850 million active mobile phone subscribers, and a mobile subscriber base (mobile and wireline) of 906.3 million, India is easily the second largest telecom market. While more people in remote corners of the country are connected today by phone, rural tele-density stands at 25 to 30%. Clearly, more can be done here in connecting our nation.

A decade ago, the focus in India was on the 'T' in IT. Today, the information explosion from a plethora of devices and platforms has firmly shifted this focus to the 'I' of IT. With end-point devices becoming more powerful and reaching consumers across the country, we've seen a shift from consumers being passive recipients of data and information, to also being the producers of information.

Nowhere is this shift more evident than in the video eco-system. Where once content creation was the sole prerogative of studios and broadcasters, today podcasts, videocasts, and video upload sites allow anyone to create, edit, package and distribute video content effortlessly. This, I believe, is the future of information usage and consumption. Managing complexity and vast swathes of information will become the mantra for the next wave of IT innovation. While structured data analysis continues to evolve, consumers and organizations have begun to realize greater value by incorporating their unstructured 'Human Information' (ideas and concepts that people communicate every day like email, PPTs, phone conversations, etc). This information makes up about 85 per cent of all data and is the future of information computing. It represents a fundamental shift in the way people and businesses interact with information.

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Today there is a blurring distinction between technology for professional and personal use. Convergence of device functionality is a reality as phones become feature laden and akin to laptops and PCs. The difference between smartphones and personal computing devices at the low end are blurring. The requirement for two separate devices today is mainly driven by constraints and functionality limitations arising from the form factors. But with cutting edge research in flexible display technology and gesture based computing, that may also disappear someday. And, as cloud computing becomes ubiquitous, there will be even more innovations at both the application and platform level as well as on the hardware delivery side. Security will also play a critical role as companies evolve frameworks and processes to guard their information assets that reside in the cloud.

Technology is now expected to grow businesses, keep consumers connected, build sustainable cities, advance medical research and tackle some of the world's greatest infrastructure and economic challenges. This presents enormous opportunities for the IT industry. Whether it is tackling the growing menace of counterfeit drugs using mobile and cloud platforms, setting up fully equipped remote village healthcare and education centers in shipping containers or using social media to predict customer satisfaction, technology is clearly a catalyst for social and financial inclusion.

As we march ahead, IT will shape our lives in ways we cannot even imagine right now. Historically, technology has played a key role in transforming economies and it'll continue doing so. The most significant aspect of technology today as compared to the past decade is that it is gradually moving to the background as an enabler and not as visible as it was in the past. Our prime concern is slowly but surely shifting from dealing with gadgets and technologies. We are, in fact, dealing with conveniences and efficiencies.

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