Next 30 years will be even more exciting for tech sector: Kris Gopalakrishnan

The next 30 years are going to be even more exciting for the tech sector, information technology industry veteran S (Kris) Gopalakrishnan said on Thursday, forecasting increased outsourcing business.

In spite of the COVID-19 crisis, the IT industry in India has done well and reinforced the strengths of the global delivery model and increased the trust and the dependence on the model by global businesses, Infosys Co-founder said.

Both the IT companies as well as the Global Delivery Centres in the country have managed to transition to work from home without any interruption in the service to their customers, he noted in his virtual address at the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2020.

The central government has eased the requirements of place of work from export zones to include the homes of employees, Gopalakrishnan pointed out.

The former President of the Confederation of Indian Industry said IT companies were also evolving to adopt digital technologies faster, integrating these into their services and getting more of their revenues from digital business.

"This again demonstrates the resilience of the Indian IT industry and augurs well for the future", said Gopalakrishnan, who is also the Chairman of Karnataka government's vision group on information technology.

There are many new technologies emerging like AI/ML, IoT, 5G communication technology, cognitive cloud computing, newer programming paradigms with new languages, and quantum computing, said the Chairman of Axilor Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm.

"I believe that the next 30 years are going to be even more exciting and businesses will continue to transform by adopting these technologies. This will mean that IT systems and infrastructure will continue to evolve over the next 30 years and I expect outsourcing to see increased business", he said.

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Gopalakrishnan said the industry body NASSCOM projected that the IT industry in India will grow to $300 billion by the next five years from the current $190 billion. "These are exciting times," he quipped.

In parallel, the nature of work was changing, he said, adding, it is expected that the future model for work would involve some mixture of office and work from home.

"This will mean creation of new business processes, security models, and regulations. The Government of India has already extended the regulations on work from home indefinitely. New tools for collaboration and measurement of productivity may need to be developed", according to him.

IT employees undergo training as business and technology evolve. With these changes, training has to include the new business processes too. He believes that this is a huge task, as the industry employs about four million people.

Given that the IT industry was undergoing significant changes, the central government's support must continue, Gopalakrishnan told the audience at the flagship technology event of Karnataka.