Saturday, October 30, 2010

Information technology in India

The Indian Information Technology industry accounts for a 5.19% of the country's GDP and export earnings as of 2009, while providing employment to a significant number of its tertiary sector workforce. More than 2.3 million people are employed in the sector either directly or indirectly, making it one of the biggest job creators in India and a mainstay of the national economy. In March 2009, annual revenues from outsourcing operations in India amounted to US$50 billion and this is expected to increase to US$225 billion by 2020. The most prominent IT hub is IT capital Bangalore. The other emerging destinations are Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Bhubaneswar, NCR, Jaipur and Kolkata. Technically proficient immigrants from India sought jobs in the western world from the 1950s onwards as India's education system produced more engineers than its industry could absorb. India's growing stature in the information age enabled it to form close ties with both the United States of America and the European Union. However, the recent global financial crises has deeply impacted the Indian IT companies as well as global companies. As a result hiring has dropped sharply and employees are looking at different sectors like the financial service, telecommunications, and manufacturing industries, which have been growing phenomenally over the last few years.
India's IT Services industry was born in Mumbai in 1967 with the establishment of Tata Group in partnership with Burroughs. The first software export zone SEEPZ was set up here way back in 1973, the old avatar of the modern day IT park. More than 80 percent of the country's software exports happened out of SEEPZ, Mumbai in 80s.

Information technology (IT) Introduction

Information technology (IT) is "the study, design, development, application, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware", according to the Information Technology Association of America . IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to securely convert, store, protect, process, transmit, input, output, and retrieve information.

Today, the term information has ballooned to encompass many aspects of computing and technology, and the term has become very recognizable. IT professionals perform a variety of functions (IT Disciplines/Competencies) that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information databases. A few of the duties that IT professionals perform may include data management, networking, engineering computer hardware, database and software design, as well as management and administration of entire systems. Information technology is starting to spread farther than the conventional personal computer and network technology, and more into integrations of other technologies such as the use of cell phones, televisions, automobiles, and more, which is increasing the demand for such jobs.
In the recent past, ABET and the ACM have collaborated to form accreditation and curriculum standards for degrees in Information Technology as a distinct field of study separate from both Computer Science and Information Systems. SIGITE is the ACM working group for defining these standards. The Worldwide IT services revenue totaled $763 billion in 2009.