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History is testimony to the fact that human civilization has progressed through continuous exploration of economic and human resources and by making products and services available to its customers. The silk route, a widespread network of caravan ways that crossed Europe and Asia from the Mediterranean coast to China in ancient times and middle ages probably marked the beginning of globalisation as it enhanced business relations and cultural exchanges between the East and West. It was probably the first sign of changing customer needs that opened up new avenues of availability at the global level. The spice trade and eventually the start of the Industrial Revolution were fuelled by a new paradigm of availability – an uninterrupted supply chain of resources to the factories of North Europe.

We are now entering an era of unprecedented choice. We are in the midst of the biggest explosion of variety in history. Availability is now sitting on a totally new online platform that is being powered by the web. The market is now redefining itself into a new form of availability and into a world of abundance. Availability is also being built around knowledge networks; self help solutions and the 24x7 services model.

Customer needs in this new marketplace are becoming more niche as consumers are taking more intelligent decisions supported by a new variety of tools. Chris Anderson talks about this in his book The Long Tail on how the power of the PC is actually democratising the tools of production. Consumer needs are being paired with other peer consumers as they collaborate in mass peer production efforts to solve mutually complementing problems and issues.

The world has seen economies move through different phases - from an agricultural to an industrial economy, to one of mass production and finally to services getting commoditised. Hyper-efficient digital economics are leading to new markets and market places. This is marking the emergence of the new age economy. Today we are in the “world of experience” economy. It is not only limited to the ’Starbucks experience’ business model but is permeating into every part of our professional lives.

With the changing economy, new market dynamics are emerging and skill requirements and career opportunities are opening up globally. Customer experience is being streamed across the globe. This is resulting in a new professional mindset, which is conscious of the global marketplace. This is especially true of the IT and ITES industry.

The Y2K was India’s opportunity to showcase its IT talent that came cheap, quick, in great abundance and technically apt to save the world from the millennium bug. This IT talent flows from thousands of technical professionals that come out from various institutes every year in India. The IT boom helped in software engineering attaining the same status as the aspirational careers in medicine or engineering, opening up a whole world of possibilities for the Indian software professional. Even up to a decade ago, software engineers were expected to be “geeks” writing pages of complex code, with minimum or no customer interface. Today, this industry is facing yet another fundamental change in paradigm. To retain his edge in this continuously evolving industry, today’s software engineer needs to constantly innovate and improve on his technical know-how as well as broaden his expertise in effective communication to recognise and respond to customer needs.

Software development has been traditionally dependent on knowledge of subjects such as computer engineering and science, finance and mathematics. In today’s dynamic world, understanding the customer and his business has become an equally critical aspect of the software engineer’s role. This is primarily because of the complexity of today’s technical environment, where products no longer exist in isolation but are required to seamlessly integrate with other products in a multi-vendor environment. To remain competitive and to differentiate themselves in a climate where customers are ever more demanding, software companies are increasingly placing the customer at the core of their businesses. This has led to the increase in demand for services led solutions. This is especially relevant in the field of technical support where engineers have the unique advantage of engaging with the two very different phases of the software lifecycle. This gives them valuable insights into the customers’ needs and problems and the power to use that knowledge to directly influence product development. Technical support has been traditionally perceived as the tail end of the software lifecycle. Today, it is evolving towards a more proactive role and is becoming a valuable partner to development teams for the creation of next-generation products. Technical support today is proactive, with support engineers anticipating potential issues in the customers’ technology environment and providing remedies that could save the customer billions of dollars in downtime and lost productivity.

As crucial as support is to the customer, it plays an even more critical role in the developer’s world. The issues faced by a developer can be extremely complex. In order to resolve these, a developer support engineer not only has to draw from his in-depth knowledge of a particular technology but from a breadth of knowledge of different technologies and how they interoperate. Typically a developer support engineer has solid development experience, which gives him a unique understanding of development issues, which helps him resolve these more effectively.

Today’s global economy is opening up more career avenues than ever before. In fact, by 2010, the IT Services and ITES sectors alone are expected to create 2.3 million job opportunities worldwide (according to a NASSCOM McKinsey report). Globalisation has resulted in a truly connected world, which transcends boundaries. Imagine a customer in the U.K. interacting with a support engineer in India to solve a business problem in the U.S! In this evolving knowledge economy, technical support is increasingly becoming a high growth, high-technology area that has the potential to be a key driver of innovation.

Welcome to the world of professional services.

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