Please don't worry about the future prospects of Information Technology industry. Though it is being felt that IT industry's future is bleak, IT software and services industry in India grossed an annual revenue of Rs 37,760 crore (US$ 8.26 billion) during 2000-01, up from Rs 24,350 crore (US$ 5.7 billion) during 1999-2000, according to the annual industry survey by National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), the apex body of software, e-commerce and IT services industry in India. That's a cool 55% growth.

NASSCOM is projecting a figure of Rs. 52,500 crore as the annual revenue of the software and services industry in the year 2001-2002. This means the industry is expected to grow at a rate of 39%. This industry is the fastest growing industry today in India with accounting for almost 2% of India's GDP. As per a study done by the global consultancy major McKinsey and NASSCOM, this industry will account for nearly 7.7% of India's GDP by the year 2008.

Contrary to popular belief, Indian firms are still one of the favorites of global companies when it comes to sourcing software and related services. The NASSCOM study has highlighted that one out of every four global giants outsourced their critical software requirements to India.

As per the Nasscom survey, the Indian software industry has not only been growing exponentially but also is maturing very fast. This means moving from serving low technology and manpower needs of companies to offering high tech solutions. The industry has evolved from body shopping (supplying IT skilled manpower) to software development to Enterprise solution to IT business consulting.

Though, thanks to negative media reports and subsequent popular belief, it is being said that IT is dead today, the scenario is not that bleak. It is true that due to slow down in US economy, US firms have cut down their IT spending, but at the same time many US companies have expressed increasing interest in the Indian software industry. Many companies have announced their plans of either outsourcing software from India or investing in Indian IT industry. Apart from the US companies, there are new countries which looking to India for outsourcing IT software and services. For example, companies in Europe and Japan are increasing their IT outsourcing to India.

Apart from the traditional software development sector, there are a few emerging sectors in the IT software and service industry which will drive the overall growth of the industry in near future. For example, E-commerce software is emerging as a significant area of growth of the Indian IT software and services industry. It is projected by a McKinsey-NASSCOM study, that by the year 2008, E-commerce software business in India can touch revenue of US $ 10 Billion.

IT Enabled Services are also emerging as the another major factor for the growth of the IT industry. This covers a wide range of services including Call Centre Services, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) services, Medical Transcription, Data conversion/data entry, Data Processing, Back Office Operations, Digital content development, Animation, GIS (Geographic Information Services), etc. IT enabled service sector (like Medical Transcription) is also going to be Rs 81,000 crore by the year 2008 from the current Rs 2,400 crore.

So overall, it can be said that all is not bad in the IT industry. There are still a lot of potentials of growth. It may not be a meteoric growth but definitely the growth is going to be healthy. In fact, the industry is gunning for a total turnover of US $ 50 Billion by the year 2008. And naturally, there will be demand for quality manpower.

The demand for manpower may not be as exponential as we have seen over the last few years, but there are definitely good prospects for the trained professionals. The overall feeling is that, people with the right qualifications and skills will find jobs. MCA is one of the right qualifications to get a job in the IT software and services industry.