Tech Pursuits-In keeping with technological advancements, the IT sector now offers a number of niche career opportunities to graduates. Reported by Pooja Mahimkar

India’s  IT  sector is expected to grow 11% per annum and
triple its current annual revenue to reach US$350 billion by FY 2025, as per
NASSCOM. While this growth is expected to further boost employment
opportunities in the sector in the future, IT graduates today too have many
careers to choose from. Apart from the obvious private and public sector
opportunities that graduates can explore in India as well as overseas,
graduates also have the option to venture into the business and academic
world. 

Here are the three major upcoming
options the field offers:

  

 Cloud computing

Cloud computing involves storing
data on the internet without needing any physical storage drive. Since most organizations
are looking to upgrade from their servers to the cloud, jobs in the cloud
computing sector are multiplying. Fresh graduates or IT professionals who wish
to make a career in this field can work as cloud architects, cloud engineers,
cloud consultants, etc.

“Enterprises have to leverage the
power of software to reimagine, redefine and rewrite the way their current
data, applications and infrastructure are managed. This has brought back the
focus on hiring and nurturing talent with core software engineering skills like
cloud computing,” says Samson David, SVP – head, global services, cloud and
infrastructure services, Infosys.

Sectors that hire: Telecom, social media, e-commerce and banking 

Big data Analysis 

Big data analytics is the process of
examining large amounts

of varied data to identify
not-so-obvious patterns and correlations, market trends, customer choices and
such statistics that can provide insightful analysis to businesses. 

“In India, the latest areas of
research are big data analysis, cloud computing, web security, cyber laws, data
mining, business intelligence, 4G, mobile telephony, etc. One needs to have
good analytical, logical and programming skills in addition to good
communication skills to make a career in this field. For this, a candidate must
learn various programming languages and should try and implement them in small
projects that they undertake during their academic years,” says Roopali Garg,
assistant professor, department

of IT, Panjab University,

Chandigarh.

Sectors that hire: Finance and insurance, technology, scientific and academic
sectors 

Ethical hacking

Ethical hackers are employed to find
loopholes in a company’s security system and save it from hackers. Ethical
hackers perform vulnerability assessments and penetration tests to identify and
report the weak zones of a company’s software and the potential hacking risks
to keep the system healthy. 

“Cyber crime, data breach, email
frauds and website defacement are common issues organisations face. Banks, IT companies
and government bodies are most likely to fall prey to hackers. Since only a few
people are aware of ethical hacking as a career in our country, there are a
number of jobs,” says Anshuman Kak, co-founder and director, SecRoot Security
Solutions Pvt Ltd.

Professionals in this field can work
as security researchers, secure code reviewers, information security
consultants, information security analysts, cyber security professionals,
network security engineers and digital forensics analysts.

Sectors that hire: Banking, IT e-commerce and social media