Advances in Information Technology (IT) are sweeping the globe. It is seen as a vehicle for future development, opportunities, challenges and competition that enables information to be collected and used meaningfully. Computers and communication technologies are the main components of IT. In recent years, IT has become the focus area of the country's overall development and prosperity aiming to give the country a status of IT super power in the world.

Computers are basically electronic devices that help us to perform most routine tasks faster and with predictability. They are fast infiltrating our daily lives, making us increasingly dependent upon automation. Many of our daily activities can be monitored easily with the growing use of computers. Computers used in Research and Development work all over the world have helped speed up and improve the pace and quality of intricate research work. At home people use Personal Computers for typing letters, playing video games, educating children and maintaining personal accounts. IT deals with both the software that runs these devices and the actual hardware.

IT users in India have started showing a marked preference for open platforms that can be implemented at low costs. Platforms such as Intel / Windows NT / Unix, emerged as popular choices for integrating the functions and departments of organizations as these also promise extremely high transaction processing rates.

Open platforms such as Linux, Perl and Apache, gained increasing acceptance amongst large software developers and major IT users. However, this trend was even more marked amongst Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as it brought almost zero cost purchase / support offering functionality that is as good as in priced products of a similar genre.

An increase in the demand of web servers and solutions was seen due to the need to implement e-commerce solutions in brick and mortar companies as well as click and order companies.

Large sectors with low IT penetration, such as textiles and healthcare received a strong thrust from the government as well as the private sector to adopt information technology.

The Indian software industry has set the stock exchange afire in recent times. IT stocks are the trendsetters in the market today. Indian IT professionals are much in demand and they are taking the global software industry by storm with their immensely useful technical skills coupled with excellent command over English. The demand for Indian IT professionals at times far exceeds the supply... and understanding this, several new institutes have come up, offering degrees courses in Bachelor of Information Systems (BIT) and Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA).