IT Implementation-Trends

What kind of IT implementations are happening in India? Which technologies, hardware, and software are being used? We analyze based on the 250 projects we received for the Best IT Implementation Awards

Monday, June 18, 2007

Going by the nominations we received this time for the Best IT Implementation awards, it seems that the manufacturing segment was the most active in terms of deploying IT last year. The highest number of IT projects came from this segment. Next in line were the Govt. and BFSI sectors, which continued to remain sunrise sectors. Together they constituted more than 30% of all the projects. Interestingly, there weren't as many IT projects from the IT/ITES segment as the other three. IT/ITES only constituted about 10% of the overall projects. Amongst the remaining sectors, the surprise packets were education and power & utility. Both segments have become 'rather innovative' users of IT. For instance, one of the utility companies created a GIS map of North Delhi, which captured every detail down to the last street. On top of this map, the company mapped each and every piece of electrical equipment that they've laid out, down to the last lamp post. They say that this project helps them track their assets, as well as address customer complaints better, apart from many other benefits. Another company that does power distribution in West Bengal has put tamper proof meters with a GSM modem for all their commercial customers. This helps them remotely track how much electricity is being consumed by each consumer. Now that's innovative! Similarly, in education, one engineering college in the south has developed and deployed an ERP package using completely Open Source software, and uses it for a lot of things. Another govt. owned research institute also implemented an ERP package, which incorporates all govt. policies and practices. So there seems to be a lot of action in the education sector, and one is likely to see more in the future.

Types of implementations across industries
Out of all the different types of projects done in the manufacturing segment last year, ERP projects topped the charts. A lot of manufacturing companies embraced ERP. Workflow automation and infrastructure projects were the other key project types taken up by the manufacturing sector last year. Likewise, the Govt. continued to have a strong focus on e-governance projects. A lot of govt. departments and ministries were busy building up their IT infrastructures by introducing workflow automation, setting up new information systems and portals, HR management solutions, mobility solutions, etc.

As far as IT/ITES companies go, then unlike others, they continued strengthening their respective IT infrastructures. The maximum projects that were implemented in this segment were related to IT infrastructure. The interesting thing was that they used some of the latest technologies, and we even had the benefit of seeing some of those this time. They used virtualization, latest consolidation techniques, the best data center equipment, the latest WAN technologies, and much more to ensure that their IT infrastructures are world class.

Last but not the least is the BFSI segment. This segment was not only busy upgrading its IT infrastructure with the latest technologies, but was also busy doing a lot of other things. We noticed a lot of banks moving to core banking solutions. This is good news for customers because it will enable them to do banking from any of the bank's branches. Besides core banking, security is becoming an increasing concern. We noticed many banks deploying information security solutions. The insurance sector, which hasn't really embraced technology as much as the banks till now, seems to have woken up. Many of the public sector insurance companies are trying to get more networked, and some are even using MPLS technology for connecting their branches. The more tech savvy companies in BFSI, who have already done all the networking, core banking, etc are now looking towards improving their internal processes. Hence they're into workflow automation.

That was all about the overall project implementations that we observed across the country. Let's now drill a little deeper into the kinds of technologies and trends being used by IT projects.

Technology usage
While going through all the projects we received, we came across some very interesting trends in the technologies being adopted by organizations for their projects.

MS .NET for Portals
Most of the portal solution projects that we received were developed using ASP.NET or VB .Net. We spoke to the project heads of these portals to find out why they chose this platform. The answer was simplicity. According to them, creating projects on ASP.NET is mush easier and requires less code to write. Plus, it's very easy to find people who know how to develop on this platform. In fact, developers who can code in VB can easily shift to .NET without too much training. Interestingly, a lot of the public sector projects that we analyzed were also developed on .NET platform.

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