53% of India’s IT brass scouting for new jobs: Zoho Corp division

BENGALURU: In India, 91% of business and technology leaders agree collaboration between IT and other lines of business has increased in the past two years, said a top leader of ManageEngine, the 20-year-old enterprise IT management division of Zoho Corp.

The chief information officer is no longer the fulcrum of decision-making, as stakeholders across other functions such as accounting, marketing, sales and HR, are having a say, too, noted Shailesh Davey, co-founder and vice president of engineering, Zoho.

He released the ManageEngine ‘IT at work: 22 and beyond, India’ report, prepared along with independent market research agency, Vanson Bourne, to assess the industry’s growth and trends for the coming year, here, on Wednesday.

Sharing insights on the changing nature of IT ranging from democratisation to empowerment, he said these are now paving the way for a more collaborative workforce in India, adding that 68 per cent of non-IT employees in the country were more knowledgeable about IT than they were prior to 2020.

The global study has surveyed 3,300 decision-makers across IT and other key business functions in organisations across 18 countries, including India, he pointed out.

“Our primary aim with this study was to shed light on the current state of ITDMs (decision makers) and the need for IT democratisation and empowerment for a well-knit organisation today. The swift acceleration of digitalisation catalysed by the pandemic has, without a doubt, made the role that IT plays in enterprises more vital than ever. The findings also demonstrate how the involvement of ITDMs in implementing business decisions can boost organisational performance as a whole,” Davey said, noting that IT teams were no longer consigned to the back office given the increasing co-relation between the metric data of IT and business.

Citing the example of WhatsApp, which is being used by 10-year-olds to 70-year-olds, Davey said there are instances of companies hiving off their IT vertical as a separate entity.

Though the compliance, security and governance aspects of the business remain with the IT department, other functional departments now have a say in the selection of an effective tool. The pandemic has led to a plethora of tools being available, bringing safety concerns to the fore.

Davey also said while layoffs are a reality, this is largely in the sphere of enterprises like ecommerce and social media. “The IT industry is in an earthquake zone,” he said, highlighting the challenges.

ManageEngine, which focuses on IT operations, IT service management, IT security and IT analytics, seeks to provide stability to customers by its ‘on premise and on cloud’ solutions. The architecture of IT solutions is undergoing a change as the emphasis is on the ‘zero-trust’ feature.

The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning is aimed at beefing up the IT security. Newer product launches are on the anvil, Davey said.