Systems Continuum, a series of insightful discussions chaired by the eminent leaders from the IT industry, held annually at Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay explores different aspects of Information Technology in business by initiating discussions on cutting-edge topics. At Systems Continuum 2011, held on 17th September, were discussed various topics around the theme of "Strategic Role of IT in transforming businesses". It was a great opportunity for the budding techno-managers to learn about the nuances of the IT industry from the industry experts.

The tone of the event was set by Mr. Rajiv Vaishnav, VP, NASSCOM who discussed the topic “Indian IT Impact and Future” and touched upon the journey of Indian IT industry from its inception in early 80s and the role of emergence and pivotal role NASSCOM in shaping it the way we see it now. He also threw light on how Indian IT industry transformed itself as an enabler of business to provide strategic solutions and became driver of the business.

This was followed by a discussion by Mr. Rakesh Barik, Director at Deloitte Consulting who spoke on the topic “The changing role of IT professionals”. He talked about how the roles of IT professionals have evolved over time and How IT companies are trying to move up the value chain by improving the skills of their employees.

Then in line was a lecture by Mr. Anand Prahlad, VP Engineering at McAfee who talked about Security considerations for clouds and virtualized environments. With the world moving the cloud way, the session exposed students to the concept of cloud, the key benefits, vulnerabilities and the solutions.

Following that Ms. Vijaya Kamath, General Manager-IT at Vodafone discussed a highly relevant sub-theme namely ‘Growing importance of social Media. Ms Kamath emphasized the importance of Social Media Management in today’s competitive environment and laid down the guiding principles of a successful social media campaign.

Next in line was the sub-theme ‘Next Generation Telecom-Role of IT’  which was discussed by another technology leader from Tech Mahindra, Mr. Rajesh Chandiramani (VP Sales and Marketing). While the main focus of his discussion was on the future trends in services and applications that will be implemented over the next decade, Mr. Rajesh talked at length by providing comprehensive market dimensions of telecom industry.

Towards the end of the session we had Mr. Sumit Chowdhury, Vice President IBM, who enlightened the audience on the topic “A day in the life of telecom CIO-What it takes to succeed”. He highlighted on the transformational journey of IT from silos to process based to shared services and finally to being profit generator ending his talk with mantras of being a CIO.

Systems Continuum 2011 was full of such invigorating sessions where the audience was completely hooked to their seats as they could all relate to the themes and their relevance to the current industry scenario.