Monday, July 30, 2007

"Blind Men and the Elephant" - A first step in understanding IT services

So here are two young IT professionals turned- writers, Was Rahman and Priya Kurien, who have attempted to rewrite the story exploring the intricacies of today’s ‘least understood’ IT industry. It would be wrong to say Was Rahman and Priya Kurien are trying to demystify Information Technology (IT) in their book "Blind Men and the Elephant". The industry is too much of a behemoth for one book to be able to do that.

Elaborating on the book, Was Rahman, a post graduate in Management and IT from Coventry University says, “In the poem, the six blind men described each part of an elephant and guess it was the elephant. Similar is the case with the industry as nobody has given its full history. Each group gives its own descriptions, based on its perspective.’’

Priya, an engineering graduate from Guindy Engineering College, says, “The book talks about almost all aspects of the industry from its fascinating past to the future.’’ Was and Priya’s experience in the industry has helped them gain a good understanding of the inner conflicts.

Was Rahman, who started his career in investment banking, has been in the industry for the last two decades. With five years’ experience in Infosys Technologies, he was also responsible for the company’s European Strategy, which included leading its transformation journey from supplier of commodity IT services to solver of Business problems.

Priya, who had a distinguished 13-year-career on the technology front of the industry, also co-developed the firm’s European Strategy and solutions programme.

“The industry had a fascinating history and all are talking about it. But nobody knows where it actually started,’’ she quips.


Like John Godfrey Saxe's parable, the IT services industry is slippery as the "snake", is "a tree" under which the wise man as well as the fool find shade, blows in fresh air like a "fan", ties one up in knots "like a rope" or...

To hit the stands in early August, the book wants "to make people think of the future" and "where the industry is headed" and about the pitfalls in its being and growing.

"We are trying to start a debate, what is the role of the IT services industry?" say Rahman and Kurien in their must-read.

"History repeats itself," Rahman told IANS at an interaction ahead of the release of the book in India, recalling that busts inevitably follow booms and that the IT services industry is reaching an equilibrium, which both the service sector and the customer have to come to terms with soon.

"Most people don't understand what the IT industry is all about, though in the 21st century, most people use IT in their lives in one way or the other," explained Kurien.

This rings a bell, especially when we come face to face with the jargon-filled world of COBOL (common business oriented language), ERPs (enterprise resource planning) and MRPs (material resource planning).

Each specific IT service sector is getting more specialised and more "driven by profit", but not becoming meticulous enough to cover its back, thus exposing itself to technology that can make it not only outdated but the service entirely redundant.

The book looks in some detail at some great IT service sector stories, but they all end with a cautionary note - the euphoria needs to be contained.

The industry is not about technology. Let's not forget, said the authors, "it is about the service, it is about the investment, about leadership and empowerment", and any of these missing can make the industry crash.









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