Indian it and the Storm in the Measuring Cup

Ever taken a walk in the hills? Just when you think you have reached the top,

there is one more peak. The end point just keeps shifting. In one way, being in

the IT industry is like that experience. Just when you think you have it mapped,

it moves off in a new direction. The IT industry has grown both by internal

developments as well as by ‘acquiring’ other industries. It first acquired

calculating machines, then it acquired typewriters and in the recent past, it

has acquired the postal system…in future, it threatens to acquire the

television and entertainment industries. With increasingly seamless industry

associations, it is impossible to define where the IT industry ends. And with

the definitions changing frequently, the job of making comparisons is

precarious.

ITeS: The new buzzword



For IT in India, the big ‘acquired’ industry this year is ITeS. Should

services based on IT be a part of the IT industry? One argument is that

industries that are based significantly on IT should be included, while others

should not. The counter-argument is that there’ll be no industries that are

not significantly dependent on IT.

For instance, travel. No ticketing on airlines is possible even today without

IT–so should travel be a part of IT? And tomorrow, if the entire sale of cars

from one manufacturer happen online, would that become a part of IT? Or if VoIP

becomes big, will all revenues of voice over the Internet be a part of the IT

industry?

What about revenues from Internet service providers? ISPs provide several

services and these will only increase with time. If e-mail becomes paid and

generates revenues, will it be a part of the IT industry–thereby competing

with the postal industry? What happens when composite devices like palmtops and

mobile phones become commonplace? Do they get added to IT or to telecom, or to

both? If you watch films on my portable downloaded from an application service

provider over a broadband network, are the revenues of that included in those of

the information technology industry? And, of course, if you start reading this

content online and pay us for it, are those revenues part of the IT industry?

The convergence of technologies and applications is logically leading to

questions about size and growth measurement practices for these converged

industry segments. The answers will evolve with time–as convergence happens,

new ways of measuring the size of industries, classifications and definitions

will emerge. That will be the job of analysts.

What comes first? ‘C’? Or ‘I’?



At the ground level, these will change the way of life of millions across

the planet. One trend that is very evident is that the ‘C’ of ICT will drive

IT growth and the ‘I’ will be the follower. In other words, computers will

not drive the growth of this industry. It will be the availability and

accessibility of communication that will drive the growth of computers. No

doubt, there will be other factors too.

But if you want to single out one, it would have to be this: the computer

density of a society will be important, but its tele-density will be the really

critical determinator. While the networked computer and its power to impact

society was always seen to be higher than the standalone machine, it is only in

the last couple of years that this vision has turned into concrete reality.

The importance of connectivity of telephones, mobiles, computers, networks

and other devices is the mantra of the moment.

Individuals, societies and countries that harness this power are already

emerging winners and will continue to do so.

Today there is a grave imbalance amongst countries–both in terms of

equipment and the usage that it is put to. There are 83 countries that have a

tele-density below 10% and 25 with a tele-density below 1%. That is a huge

difference. In other words, the revolutions of the past 50-100 years are

microscopic. The usage patterns are even more starkly different. High costs make

even the basic telephone call a rarity in some countries.

Missing out on the obvious



Just look around and you will find people around you who think twice before

making a telephone call! For those who have got used to a telephone being as

essential an attachment as the mouth, this would be a surprise. Not because they

do not know it. But because it just escapes their thought process. The Internet

connectivity spread is even more disparate. In the islands of bandwidth in

abundance, guzzling applications run without a stop. In other places, the

Internet with all its power just does not exist.

Today, the real poverty of a country lies in the paucity of its information

infrastructure. This will only increase as information oriented activities

increase as a percentage of total gross domestic product. Prosperous cities and

countries emerging as islands of information. Bangalore in India and Singapore

in Asia are examples. But surrounding these are oceans of information poverty.

This underscores why for next couple of decades the driver of growth will be

communications.

A parallel trend that is emerging is the slow down of innovation in

information technology–as we knew it. The argument is that future changes are

more of an evolutionary nature than revolutionary. Faster microprocessors,

bigger disk drives, mobiles with more features are enhancements that will add

convenience but may not be earthshaking in their impact. Today, there’s

sufficient evidence to suggest that hardware is now a commodity. There is no

mystery in the technology and the developments are predictable or even boring.

Product differentiation is not a technology issue but a marketing ploy. It may

not have reached the stage of the cola wars but the trend is clear.

Software has more variety but is so dominated by one set of products that the

excitement is missing. After the dotcom bust, finance is wary of information

technology and investments will remain stunted. This leads one to believe that

human endeavor will shift to advances in biotechnology or even biology. And the

silicon-dominated advances of the past 50 years may very much become history.

Deployment, not development



Not that IT or ICT are dead. But the challenge is now of deployment not

development. For many users in India–and across the world–the real

revolution is yet to happen. For them, the revolution will happen when

applications reach them. From the time a technology evolves to the time it

becomes ubiquitous is decreasing but it still spans generations. Television,

automobiles, electricity, telephones, healthcare have taken generations to

spread–not months or years.

The same is true of ICT. The Internet, which was touted as the super quick

opportunity creator has lost a bit of its sheen. It retains its potential but no

is sure how and when will it spread itself far and wide.

So what’s the bottomline? Is there no way by which these periods can be

shortened? It would be nice if there were a technology that could make that

happen! Or if at least, a part of the resources used in developing technologies

were diverted to spreading it.

The author is Editor-in-Chief and Executive Director of Cyber Media (India)

Ltd, the publishers of Dataquest.

He can be reached at shyamm@cmil.com