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Compaq India CEO Som Mittal on the fluidity of the Net

The fourth keynote address was delivered by Som Mittal, managing director and CEO of Compaq Technologies India Limited.

"The Internet has caused a new paradigm shift in life and living. In India, after the ISP policy was announced, there were 1,140 applications for licences within a month. This shows the tremendous scope for use of IT," Mittal said.

He talked about the concept of a business ecosystem that will include the individuals, small businesses, home consumers and many means of IT empowerment for the people.

The concerns will be mainly to reduce costs and improve operations. Service and responsiveness will be a major expectation in the future business environment.

Today, technology is only an enabler and in terms of time the situation has reversed over the past: Now 70 per cent time is spent on business and 30 per cent on technology, Mittal observed.

CIOs are also looking at these shifts in personal productivity and the commercial and technical performances of the IT systems they deploy. Today users of computing systems are not just IT the personal.

There is a commercial shift. For instance, no more are encyclopaedias in the book form very popular today. There is a virtual take-over of the business by the IT version.

Microsoft's 'Car Point' is considered the biggest competitor to 'General Motors' because of its popular usage for car selection.

The publisher now knows the reader as Amazen.com has shown us. This was not the case earlier, he pointed out.

Technology shifts are taking place but they do not affect common user. 'Internet-I', offering the supplier-driven commercial site will give place to the shopper-driven sites of 'Internet-II', Mittal said.

Customer-relations management will also become more crucial in the Internet business scenario. People are going to demand more and better service.

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