Gartner Pre-budget quote

Hi Team,

 

Appended below is the Pre-Budget quote from Gartner.  

 

Hope you can incorporate the same.

 

You can reach me on 9833049690 for any further information.

 

Thank you

 

Warm regards,

Monica

 

Partha Iyengar - VP Distinguished Analyst and Regional Research Director, India, at Gartner (Pic Attached) -

 

The 2009 budget is going to be historic in India for a number of reasons. For one, it is the first in a long time where the budget will not be subjected to the difficulties of ‘implementing’ a fractured mandate, and giving in to all of the dysfunctional pulls and tugs and vested interests that predominantly affected past budget exercises. Secondly, specifically from the IT industry perspective, we have reached a point of maturity where it is pointless to focus on minor tactical ‘tweaking’ of support to the industry with the eternal bogie of ‘tax incentives’. Instead the focus needs to be more on the strategic opportunity and future competitive imperatives for the industry, and frankly the country in terms of a significant and systemic focus on education reform and infrastructure reform, the two critical pillars on which the Indian IT industry will either prosper and become an IT ‘superpower’ or die and be relegated back to the ‘body shopping’ days on the world IT stage over the next 5 to 10 years. If the only focus for the Indian IT industry remains whether the tax breaks are extended or not, a tremendous disservice will have been done to the industry, in-spite of (seemingly) meeting their needs.

 

In addition to specific and ‘game changing’ allocations to improve the state of infrastructure in the education as well as the quality and availability of primary and secondary levels of education (forget tinkering with the IITs and IIMs – that’s the least of the problems!), there needs to be a specific focus and message on the effectiveness of implementation and cabinet oversight on speedy and consistent implementation.

 

The key reasons why these are the two pillars of IT industry growth (and frankly survival) in the longer term are that the biggest issue for India today is that the quality of manpower (not raw availability), with, anecdotally, only 20-25% of the graduating work-force being employable. And secondly, we have moved way past individual IT companies’ ability to account for significant infrastructure short-falls in managing and growing their business, to where city / country level factors have become the decision criteria now. Manifestations of this range, for example, from a client CIO being uncomfortable with basing his work in a particular city because the work will require some of his senior people to be based there for extended periods, and concerns around the ‘quality of life’ in the city (directly impacted by infrastructure) does not give him the comfort level to do so. Today this debate is focused around deciding on Bangalore vs Pune or Chennai, but soon this debate is going to extend to Bangalore vs Beijing (and in some case this has already started happening). That is where the danger lies for India, and only the government can fix that problem, unless the IT companies start getting into city level road building, creating local and international connectivity etc, just as they have been forced to become utility companies to support their business!

 

 

 

 

Monica Aggarwal

Account Supervisor

Corporate Voice | Weber Shandwick

Vilco Centre, ‘B’ Wing, 4th Floor,

# 8, Subhash Road, Vile Parle (East),

Mumbai – 400 057, India

T: 40311213 | M: 9833049690 | F: 26820504

E: monica@corvoshandwick.co.in

www.webershandwick.com

 

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