Certification - August 2008 - (Page 28)

tional travelers expect Wi-Fi to be guaranteed in many countries, there are more remote locations where those who rely heavily on technology might be taken aback. Sunner, for instance, was surprised to find himself sans access to both Wi-Fi and his BlackBerry in Oman, a country bordering the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. It took him a week to recover from the backlog of e-mails and messages created by the 48-hour lack of connectivity. Then there are countries where people have trouble getting foreign technological devices to work. After an unplanned stopover at Osaka airport in Japan to avoid a typhoon, Sunner and his fellow passengers experienced technical difficulties when trying to notify family and friends of their whereabouts using triband cell phones. “It seems that Japan has its own mechanisms to accommodate cell phone users, and phones that work in all territories including Japan are quite rare,” Sunner said. In addition to the technical difficulties, Sunner ran into written and verbal language barriers in Japan and would have had to resort to using Wi-Fi to make a call had he not found British currency on his person to call his office in London. Despite the fact that IT professionals are spread across the globe and speak a variety of languages, they communicate through a common language. “IT professionals speak a common language — computing — and IT can help reduce the culture divide,” Nijhon said. That said, he noted that most IT professionals in countries such as India, China and Eastern Europe speak enough English to support IT discussions. “The somewhat similar business experience of IT is a starting point to mitigate cultural differences within the field,” Bostick added. Nijhon calls attention to a much bigger obstacle than language. “It’s easy to solve language and cultural barriers with training,” he said. What he views as the biggest obstacle facing IT professionals is their mindset toward business. “There needs to be a focus on the final business outcome rather than the impact of coding they are performing,” Nijhon said. “They need to move from an IT-manager mindset to a business-manager mindset.” Impact of IT on Society It would be short-sighted to say that IT doesn’t affect culture. In some cases, a booming IT industry can go so far as to culturally revolutionize a city. Shende cites Bangalore as a classic example. Known as “the Silicon Valley of India,” Bangalore is a software-development hotspot that has long been home to a mix of large Indian software companies such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro Technologies, as well as Western IT companies. The infiltration of IT has caused the city to see an influx of trained IT professionals, and thereby a shift in the From the U.S. and the U.K. to India and China, IT has influenced the lifestyle and culture of places from global IT hubs to the world’s poorest regions. general population from primarily retirees to urban, middle-class youth. Bangalore has been known throughout modern history as a city with a good educational infrastructure, state enterprises that provide employment and salubrious weather that attracts retirees, Shende said. But it was the emergence of smallsized IT services companies that was the starting point of the city’s revolution. “Till the mid-1980s, there was nothing distinctive about Bangalore that presented hints of the metamorphosis that the city was to undergo,” he said. In retrospect, Shende said that Bangalore was affected positively and negatively by the offshor- 28 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE August 2008 http://www.infosys.com/ http://www.tcs.com/homepage/Pages/default.aspx http://www.wipro.com/ http://www.wipro.com/

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Certification - August 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream jVirtual Village Tech Careers Dear Techie Troubleshooting Academic Connection What We Like Look Ahead The China Boom United in IT: Tech Culture Breaks Down Barriers Abroad Interface Digital Home Technology Integrator: Specialized Skills for the Smart Home Inside Certification Ad Index Endtag

Certification - August 2008

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