Enthusiastic Participation from Industry & Academia in IIMK's Annual IT Management Seminar

Enthusiastic Participation from Industry & Academia in IIMK's IT Management Seminar 'AIMS 2006'
Post-event Press-release

Previous

The fourth speaker of the day - Mr. Venki Sundaresan, Director, IT Group, Cypress Semiconductors - started the session with a declaration that, in India, IT is heading for a disaster. He gave two reasons for this - the rising salaries in this field (which erase India's cost advantage) and the ubiquity of IT.

He briefly introduced the concept of Neo-IT, a new IT paradigm that encourages people to be 'imagineers' - those who can imagine and engineer innovations - and elucidated how it could solve this problem. Being a message simplifier and efficiency expert were as important as technical soundness for an IT manager, he asserted.

Mr. Somick Goswami, Head, PwC TAS - South India, gave an insightful discourse on the evolving nature of the IT consulting industry and the challenges faced in managing these dynamics. Starting with the oft-quoted joke, "A consultant is a person who will borrow your watch, tell you the time, bill you for it, and keep the watch," he nevertheless emphasized that a consultant is an agent of change, who must develop flexible, easy to implement ideas and solutions that add value to a business. According to him, consultants have to become trusted advisers who are able to bridge the gap between business-needs and technological solutions. He finished by stressing on accountability as a major issue with new accounting regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley and SEBI's Clause 49.

This concluded a highly informative and acclaimed series of talks by some of the most experienced IT practitioners in the corporate community. The event was very well-received by both industry and academia participants. As Ms. Simeen Mirza, a first year student of IIM-K remarked, "Such events give us a vivid understanding of how what we learn in books here is actually applied in the industry, and thus make for a more complete learning experience."

The event also featured two case study competitions, Cognizant Sys-o-Mania and the HCL Challenge, which had 23 of the top B-Schools in India, including the IIMs, vying for the top honors. A team from IIM Kozhikode won the HCL Challenge, with IIM Calcutta coming second, while Sys-o-Mania was won by the same team from IIM Calcutta, with second and third place going to IIM Kozhikode and FMS Delhi, respectively.

Concluded.

Click here to post your views/ comments/ experience on this...

Contributed by -
Malavika,
Media Cell Team,
Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode,
Kozhikode, Kerala.

MBA Alumni \| MBA Students \| MBA Aspirants \| MBA Forums