A Global Model for IT – PACIS 2009

The Srini Raju Centre for IT and the Networked Economy (SRITNE) at the Indian School of Business (ISB) hosted the Association for Information Systems (AIS) affiliated IS Conference of the Pacific-Asia region, at Hyderabad, India. The conference, from July 10 to 12 was co-sponsored by Deloitte and was brought for the first time to India in 2009 in its 13 edition.

The theme of PACIS 2009 was ‘IT Services in a Global Environment.’ The Information Technology (IT) function has evolved into an increasingly service oriented and global model, and this thought set the theme for the Conference.

It was a three day conference comprising academic paper presentations, poster sessions, panel discussions a doctoral consortium and tutorials. Apart from research scholars across the globe the Conference brought in some eminent executives from the industry for their perspectives on many of the common IS themes in the research world today.

Industry panels during PACIS 2009: Societal Value of Information Technologies

Panellists for this discussion were Manish Sabharwal, Chairman and Co-founder, Teamlease, Shrihari Kulkarni, Vice President, Projects and New Initiatives, Comat, S Sivakumar, Chief Executive, ITC Agri Business Division, and Dr Balaji Utla, Chief Executive Officer, Health Management and Research Institute (HMRI). The discussion was moderated by Professor Ravi Bapna, Executive Director, SRITNE. Panellists spoke about how the social impact of IT in India is a unique story because of the country’s distinctive blend of respect and fascination for tradition. The labour market in India, the concept of ‘learning for earning,’ and the importance of education reforms etc were also discussed.

Globalisation and its impact on IT Management Principles: This discussion comprised Umesh Jain, President and CIO, Yes Bank, Kush Desai, Managing Director, SAP Labs India Pvt Ltd, Bipin Pendyala, Vice President and Site Manager, CA and Hari Kumar, Managing Director, Deloitte, US and was moderated by Assistant Professor Deepa Mani, Information Systems, ISB. The discussion provided deep insights into certain changing dimensions of globalisation including the stronger supply and demand players from BRIC quartet. The panellists resonated with the idea that globalisation in this day and age has moved from outsourcing the periphery of business functions to empowering the global partners with informed and smart decision processes related to the core functions of the firm. The reason for outsourcing has also moved from being cost leverage to value influence. Cost differential does not exist beyond a certain rank across the geographies and it is not enough to sustain the outsourcing model in the supply countries. What firms look for today is creating value.

Moving up the value chain for IT service providers: M Narsimha, VP and Centre Head, Infosys, President, HYSEA and Bipin Paracha, Partner, Value Realisation, Wipro Consulting contributed to the discussion which was moderated by Professor Nishtha Langer, Assistant Professor, Information Systems, ISB.

The panel talked about how Indian service provider space has moved up the value chain from being a IT provider to a change agent that challenges ideas and takes ownership.The panel also agreed to the point that relationship which started off based on pure cost arbitrage has evolved into being a process differentiator and a business partner. The second thing that companies did to move up was to enter the core business at an earlier stage.

The Conference also saw various cutting edge research papers on a wide array of topics such as Human-Computer Interaction, Collaboration and Knowledge Management, Economics of IS and Digital Goods, IS Security and Privacy, IS in developing countries and Management, Innovation and Governance of IT Services, etc.