‘There is a shift in the way IT is used’

Kris Gopalakrishnan

Even as the domestic IT industry is witnessing a slower growth rate, Infosys co-founder and Executive co-chairman S. Gopalakrishnan, on Tuesday, said he was “very optimistic” about the growth in the sector in the medium- to long-term on the back of rising demand for information technology.

However, he believes that the way information technology (IT) is consumed will see a significant change.

“Over the medium- to long-term, I am very optimistic (about the industry growth) because the use of IT is only going to increase. I strongly believe that over the next several years we will see significant increased use of IT which, in turn, means that there are significant opportunities for new business creation, new products to be introduced, new use of technology and new business model,” he told

The Hindu during an interview.

Mr. Gopalakrishnan, who has recently been appointed President of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), said there was an on going shift in the way IT was consumed.

“…today the way IT is consumed, you no longer have to own the data centre; no longer you have to own the assets. If you need something you use cloud (computing). So lots and lots of changes are happening, and I clearly see a significant shift happening in terms of how IT is used,” he said, adding that mobility would play a major role in future. “Most people when they think of IT, they actually think about mobile devices. The mobile revolution is just starting... everybody is shifting to some form of mobile device. Going forward, there will be new class of devices which have sensors and can be used for anything that you can imagine.

“Already people are using wrist bands to measure how many calories they have burned. Then there are security cameras . These devices are not thought of as computers but there is computing behind it, because there is intelligence behind it,” Mr. Gopalakrishnan said.