Emerging Technologies and the Indian IT Sector

1. Introduction 1. Indian IT industry and transition to emerging technologies 1.1 Transition to Emerging Technologies 1.2 Engineers and the Indian IT services industry 2. Research objectives and Key findings 3. Overview of Chapters 2. Research Context 1. Research Context - AI Research Lab in an IT Services organization 1.1 ITSO’s AI research lab 1.2 Work and workforce in the AI research lab 1.3 Work ethnography in the AI research lab 1.4 A Precursor study – ethnography in an engineering college 3. Emerging Technology Work in an Indian IT Services Organization 1 Emerging Technology solutions 1.1 Importance of a firm’s business context in digital transformation 1.2 Developing different emerging technology solutions 1.2.1 Internet of Things (IoT) 1.2.2 Blockchain 1.2.3 Artificial Intelligence (AI) 2 Delivering Software vs Emerging Technology solutions 2.1 Delivering software solutions 2.1.1 Principles guiding software development 2.1.2 Software development for Cloud 2.2 Comparison with Emerging Technologies 2.2.1 Maturity of development workflows 2.2.2 Work roles straddling between activities 3. Client-centric AI solutions by ITSO’s research lab 3.1 The ethnographer’s project in the AI research lab 3.2 Workflows negotiated for AI projects 3.2.1 Use-case identification 3.2.2 Proof of concept 3.2.3 Execution and deployment 3.2.4 Post deployment 3.3 Dominance of software engineering principles 4. Challenges in the transition towards emerging technologies 4.1 Servicing lower end in the client’s value chain 4.2 Difficulty in scaling-up the AI value chain 4.3 Unplanned WFH that exacerbated challenges 4. The Indian IT industry and Emerging Technologies: Mobility of Engineers 1 Role of Engineers in the Indian Industry 1.1 Engineers and Public Sector Employment 1.2 Demand from the IT industry and Mushrooming of Private Engineering Colleges 1.3 Rising demand for emerging technology workforce 2 AI research lab – work roles in an AI project 2.1 Business analysts – developing high-level frameworks 2.2 AI specific roles – less of use-case-centric productionizing 2.3 Software roles - integration and deployment 2.4 Data Scientists – building compatible workflows 3 Mobility prospects of beginner roles 3.1 Data engineers and their mobility pathways 3.1.1 Data sciences and business understanding 3.1.2 Primacy of programming skills 3.2 Cloud/software-engineers and their mobility pathways 3.2.1 Client-independent standard work requirements 3.3 Mobility challenges of non-IT engineers – the IT and non-IT divide 4 IT vs non-IT divide – manifesting in the engineering colleges 4.1 Lack of academic autonomy and rigid disciplinary boundaries 4.2 A dominant influence of IT industry for student placements 4.3 Students from non-IT disciplines and their negotiated flexibility towards IT 4.4 Students from non-IT disciplines and Emerging technology pursuits 5. Scope for substantive engagement of non-IT engineers in the IT industry 5. Discussion 1 A summary of our findings 2 Relook at client-vendor relationships in the Indian IT sector 2.1 Influence of clients on the nature of emerging technology work 2.2 Negotiating factors for a newly evolving client-vendor relationship 3 Implications of this study to the Indian IT industry and Policy 3.1 India’s IT-led innovations and the road ahead 3.2 Can the Indian IT services industry unleash its abundant domain expertise? 3.3 Implications to industrial and educational policy 4 Conclusion and Future Work 6. Theoretical Appendix 1 Critical Realism: The Philosophical Basis 1.1 Principles of Critical Realism embedded in our work ethnography 1.2 Work Ethnography 2 Critical Realism and Ethnography findings 2.1 Separation of Structure and Agency 2.2 Retroducing the hierarchical domains of the Real, Actual and Empirical 2.3 Some reflexions on our work ethnography 7. Further Readings