A Blessing in Disguise for IT Industry
Today the whole world is facing the drastic impact of COVID-19 pandemic on its economy. The COVID-19 corona virus has impacted each and every industry and directly or indirectly every business has become part of this tsunami of pandemic. Though the situation initially was completely negative and nobody had any clue on how to handle the crisis, however, over a period of time a bit of silver lining has started appearing in the clouds and now the businesses and the economy have a fair idea to handle the situation.
At initial stages when no business personnel had any idea to deal with this COVID-19 pandemic situation, it had very adverse effects on the economy and its people worldwide resulting into jobs loss, retrenchment, highest degrowth in GDP, highest recession seen ever after 2008 to name a few. It was also not easy for the businesses who could survive in this pandemic as they also had no clue to deal with situations like no adequate facilitation of the internet, resources, lack of coordination between the company and individuals on how to accomplish tasks from remote areas. Due to this, there was a monolithic loss in opportunity for many national as well as international companies . Those companies having advanced technology like web / cloud based service and infrastructure could manage upto certain level but manufacturing or other production, service, hospitality based companies experience huge impacts on the performance and services.
Despite all the negative impacts, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown few positive impacts also, especially in the IT industry worldwide which has taken a multiple times advancement in the technology development and its usage. The companies who were struggling to cope up with getting work done from employees through remote working and employees struggling to work from home, have learnt to manage the situations efficiently. The organizations have moved to a completely online cloud based IT technology infrastructure, all the transactions are maintained online through various softwares, tools and modules. The face to face meetings and conferences have been replaced with Online video-conferencing and chats through various softwares and social media platforms such as Google hangout, WhatsApp video Call, Zoom, Microsoft Teams to name a few. Even the employee engagement activities are done through online mode to keep the employees engaged in the system. All activities from employee hiring to firing is done online through softwares and systems.
Teaching and professional learning is another area where technology advancement in a few months can be seen. All the schools and colleges have moved to completely online mode and the learning process is taking smoothly in this virtual environment. Not limited to this, the latest example is use of AI in the healthcare sector, where robots are being used in place of doctors to take care of the COVID-19 patients.
With the pace at which the usage of IT and AI is increasing in India and worldwide and the focus of Indian Govt. on “Digital India” we can clearly foresee a bright future of IT in India progressing in every sector.
By Pradeep Verma
Assistant Professor
Area Head – IT & Business Analytics
