The Hindu Business Line : Exploring new frontiers of Internet, wireless

Kochi, Nov. 19 The annual IT management summit of IIM-Kozhikode – AIMS 2007 – focused on the growing pervasiveness of the Internet and its effect on the everyday lives of people.

The topic for AIMS 2007, India’s largest student-driven IT Summit, was ‘The New Frontiers of Technology: Consumer Internet, Wireless and Mobile’, and it brought together honchos from the IT industry, Government officials, and students for the two-day brainstorming session, a press release from IIM-K said.

Cognizant was the platinum partner, Nasscom the knowledge partner, Yahoo! the Quiz partner and Business Line the print media partner for the event which was held on November 17-18.

Speakers at the event – which highlighted a wide spectrum of business opportunities in the IT sector – represented a mixture of new start-ups and some global giants.

Mr Romal Shetty, Head-KPMG Telecom Division, spoke on how the industry in India thrives purely on huge numbers and can hence afford to offer services at lower rates to its customers. He predicted that more billion-dollar companies would emerge in India in the near future.

Mr Pashupathy Gopalan, Vice-President, Cypress Semiconductors, who conducted a workshop on Strategic Marketing, spoke about how the semiconductor industry is becoming the key driver for innovation in the electronics industry, and the importance and difficulty in predicting future trends in an industry as dynamic as this.

Mr Ananth Krishnan, Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer, TCS, who delivered a lecture on ‘Consumer Internet, Wireless and Mobility Implications for the Enterprise’, dwelt on the opportunities that pervasive mobility presents and the factors that hinder it from becoming a reality.

Mr Sandeep Shrivastav, Director of Search at Yahoo! India, spoke about the challenges and emerging trends of transactional and non-transactional online services and highlighted the importance of comprehending the users’ behaviour, intent, location and profile in an increasingly dynamic environment.

ConnectCalicut

Going beyond a traditional summit, AIMS 2007, in association with Calicut IT Initiative (CITI) — a professional citizens’ initiative — launched ConnectCalicut, a round table discussion where decision-makers from major IT companies, IT and Industry Secretaries of Kerala, the District Collector of Calicut, and infrastructure developers including the Aditya Birla Group, converged.

The round table discussions at ConnectCalicut served as a means of highlighting the city’s advantages as a potential IT destination and brought out a number of invaluable suggestions and ideas from the IT heads based on their own experiences.

Government officials and members of CITI actively sought feedback from IT leaders on the requirements of IT organisations in order to help Calicut bridge the gap and become the next IT destination.