IT companies into remote infrastructure management services (RIM) have started opening their gates to non-techies. Firms in the nascent sector, particularly mid-tier ones, are talking of recruiting science graduates, diploma holders, BCom and even Arts graduates in the coming months.
Companies in the sector remotely monitor and manage an enterprise?s IT infrastructure like desktops, laptops, notebooks, servers, network devices, storage devices , and security devices. Almost all Indian large tier IT services firms now have their feet in RIM which had export revenues of $4.3 billion in FY10, a growth of 11% over the previous year.
IT lobby Nasscom says that by 2020, the sector can contribute more than a third of total IT services revenues for India. RIM currently employs 90,000 people and in the next four years, about 320,000 would be required for the sector. The manpower gap is currently estimated by various experts to be about 50,000. ?There is a supply side issue. It is a new sector and not many companies have built talent,? industry veteran, chairman and managing director of Microland Pradeep Kar said. Non-techies can be recruited for bottom of the pyramid positions that has low technical content, something the industry terms as Level 1 and Level 2 (L1-L2). he added.
The RIM sector?s people pyramid is divided into at least four segments and L1 and L2 positions may form up to 65% in many companies. L3 and L4 are the more technical positions. ?The entire process of managing infrastructure is well defined for us ? what you have to do in case of a problem and in what time. Since the processes are predefined, there is a merit in hiring people from beyond engineering colleges and training them well. They don?t need to be hot shot engineers for entry level positions,? Kar said.
?L1 can be people well trained from any back ground ? Science, BCom, Arts. He does basic trouble shooting. He usually monitors to see if there is a problem,? Kar explained. Microland, a specialist IT infrastructure services provider, has 2,600 employees and is still hiring a lot more engineers and diploma holders. Companies into RIM are looking beyond engineering graduates also because it is difficult to motivate them into doing low-end technical work for a sustained period of time. ?Application services is considered to be more white color job where as infra management is considered to be a blue color job,? chief information officer of Hexaware Technologies N Nataraj said. IMS involves night shifts since critical infrastructure has to be monitored 24/7. ?To get and motivate high-end engineers in a night shift is a bit of a challenge. Apps engineers are used to 9AM to 5PM jobs,? he added. Hexaware has been hiring science graduates and other non-engineering graduates using different cost structures for L1-L2 support. ?In RIM, the rates are 3 to 5% lower compared to applications work at the entry level. People costs are the only variable available to be more profitable,? Nataraj said.