Bangalore: A ladder can help to reach to the top but an elevator makes it quicker and easier, should be the mindset for the current Indian IT industry, which has to grow in terms of innovation and upgradation. "India has a slower uptake on newer technologies. It takes time to upgrade to the new versions of applications," says Mike Rhoads, Director, Rational Software, Asia Pacific.

A similar view is observed at a Nasscom conference, where it has pointed out that in order to become a top power, India's tech industry needs to upgrade its technologies and business models, which will escape in dwindling profits and market shares. The difficulty in doing so lies in its inclination towards the traditional methods. Infact, the foundation of the policies in the technological line has given more importance to the outmoded systems and institutions. As the Technology Policy Statement of Government of India, 1983 states, "Our future depends on our ability to resist the imposition of technology which is obsolete or unrelated to our specific requirement and of policies which tie us to systems which serve the purposes of others rather than our own, and our success in dealing with vested interests in our organization; governmental, economic, social and even intellectual, which bind us to the outmoded systems and institutions." This defect infact is seen in the IT sector globally, as Gartner points out in a new survey-based report, that the IT sector in general is slow in adapting to new technologies.

The main point of this reluctance is the unreliability in the new versions, like many companies are reluctant to shift to Microsoft Vista from XP as the performance of the former is not satisfactory. Moreover, the long usage of any application increases the comfortability leading to hesitancy in the shift.

But a gradual realization has dawned on the IT sector. With the expanding economy, domestic IT spending is spurring as companies upgrade technologies to stay competitive. This will lead the industry to double in size by 2012, predicts the IDC.