Taking IT To The Common Man

At CSI 2004’s annual event, panelists talked about emerging business verticals, especially those where there exists a possibility of taking technology to the common man. Some of the interesting sessions touched upon ways to be profitable in the business, and how to leverage on the exponentially increasing BPO segment.

The CSI 2004 event was a
good amalgamation of
academic and technical bigwigs. It saw a healthy mix of business opportunities in the emerging verticals and an in-depth knowledge of the technology behind the basic IT infrastructure being implemented there. At the Computer Society of India’s (CSI) 39th national convention in Mumbai from December 1-4, 2004, the association stuck to the event’s aim to spread the knowledge of IT.

The theme was aptly named ‘IT++: The Next Generation’. The convention saw a good mix of making the best of existing tools and technologies and at the same time openly welcoming emerging database technologies also. It drew crowds from top industry honchos to technocrats and enterprise people.

The Deputy Governor of RBI, V Leeladhar, inaugurated the event. Speaking at the occasion, he said that as time progresses, IT deployment in almost all verticals is becoming crucial. “The need is to make technology affordable to the common man,” he added.

INNOVATIVE THINKING HELPS

After the inaugural lamp was lit, Deepak Phatak, professor of IIT Mumbai said that there is a need to create IT professionals who can think innovatively if we want to compete with other countries and it is CSI’s prerogative to do so. AN Roy, Commissioner of Police, Mumbai also attended the inauguration of the convention. He elaborated on how even the police force is now using IT to track criminals, handle cyber crimes and he also spoke about setting up of a cyber cell for the city.

Spread across four days, there were parallel sessions on IT in entertainment, innovative application and solutions, wherein CIOs threw light on application integration in enterprises and emerging database technologies. There were other technology sessions on knowledge management and language and speech recognition and on banking and financial services as an industry vertical.

KEEPING ‘IT’ SIMPLE

Talking about using simple technology in an efficient way, Vikas Gadre, CIO, Rallis India mentioned the importance of a simple device - the mobile phone. He talked of a new application ‘Saput’, which they have implemented for farmers, and also for people at the organizational level. He said, “Decision making for people is a lot faster as with the sending of a single message to a farmer, people can come to know what is the amount of stock in the warehouse, and if that can be supplied to vendors or not.”

This kind of information is required by sales people in the remotest of villages, and at odd hours, too. In such a case, when sales representatives cannot approach farmers directly, the ‘Saput’ application comes in handy.

THE SPECIALISTS (l-r): AN Roy Mumbai Police Commissioner, CSI’s president ML Ravi, Tata Tele Services’ Chairman Firdaus Vandrewala, RBI’s Deputy Governor V Leeladhar, CSI’s Program Committee Chairperson NL Sarda and IIT Mumbai’s Prof DB Pathak light the inaugural lamp

This also gives information on the invoicing done at any place in the last 48 hours. Thus, all two people who are miles away need is only a single message to be sent on their mobile phones to keep the business running smoothly, he said. Vikas also added that this application has been well accepted by agricultural companies.

SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE MAINTAINS ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

There were a total of four keynote speakers in the four days of the convention with Paul Clements of Carnegie Mellon University as one of them. He talked of software architecture and its importance in an organization. He defined it as the structure of a system, which comprises software elements, the externally visible properties of these elements and the relationships among them.

“Only one particular structure cannot be the architecture of the system, and the one which is useful for analysis, communication or understanding is chosen,” he added. Talking more of software architecture, Paul said that it provides a common frame of reference in which competing interests maybe negotiated and exposed.

Most importantly, it aids in maintaining and developing organizational structure. For example, it helps in division of teams, units for budgeting and planning, organization of documentation and CM libraries and incremental deployment amongst others.

“Software product lines, which are a set of software-intensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features satisfy the specific needs of a particular market segment,” remarked he.

KNOWING THE BASIC INFRASTRUCTURE

The other keynote speakers were Amit Mitra, ex-director of NYNEX and ex-chief Methodologist of AIG, Dr S Seshadri, CTO, Yahoo Inc and Subir Raha, CMD, ONGC. Another feature of the convention was the tutorials that were held. These had speakers from various organizations like Google R&D, Fortinet IIT-Mumbai and Kharagpur, among others.

Professor Vasudeva Varma of IIIT Hyderabad presented a case study that explored new methods to facilitate learning in mid-to-large size software companies. There were talks on emerging new technologies like RFID also. Professor Sridhar Iyer of IIT Mumbai and Swapnil Paranjape of Persistent Systems provided an overview to RFID and the internal workings of the technology and the design of RFID systems.

Another area that was covered for discussions was home and entertainment, with the SOHO segment experiencing a big growth. Sujit Kumar of CII talked of the emergence of broadband in India.

Banking and finance was seen as a lucrative vertical, which can be tapped for business. Vinayak Patkar of i-flex solutions talked of implementing CRM systems in this vertical, as it will be useful, especially here.

The third day of the convention had a CIO Summit wherein the speakers were Amit Mitra, Sunil Chandiramani who is a partner of Ernst & Young (India), Egidio Zarrella as Global Partner at KPMG, Gartner’s Research VP, Partha Iyengar.

A part of the event was also panel discussions like - ‘Can Indian IT organizations take on MNCs through innovation?’ This was chaired by Dr Ganesh Natrajan of ZenSar technologies.

The CSI convention thus had an interesting mix of topics like emerging technologies, verticals like banking and finance being more lucrative, home and entertainment sectors, among others.

DQCI REPORT