It would be an understatement to say that the recession has left a big dent. Be it businesses, cash reserves or staff strength – everything has taken a hit. But, the good part is that we are already talking about recession in the past tense. It is almost behind us and business is seeing growth – the market sentiment is improving.

For the IT organisation it means that you will have to manage growth with the same staff strength which was optimised at the time of slowdown. You are without the bench strength that you had before the crunch happened. This is also the time when you may have to be careful about your staff moving out to greener pastures. The market is opening up, opportunities are knocking and the job market is filled with vacant positions again. It’ll not be long before some of your employees are tempted to take that lucrative option due to low/no salary hikes in the past one year.

It is time to pull up your socks and start motivating your team. Also, it is time that you start creating your bench strength again. Not only for contingencies, but for inorganic growth too.

But, what about technology? Is your IT organisation ready? Let me state an example here, and I would go back to Apple again – as I so often do. What do you think was created first – the iPad or the iPhone? The iPhone was launched first but Multitouch and rubber-band scrolling was first demonstrated in the Apple offices on a tablet like device, a.k.a., iPad. This was said by Steve Jobs himself in an interview with Walt Mossberg, principal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

He said that after he saw the technology working on a tablet – he thought that it would work brilliantly for a phone – much better than a tablet. Not that the tablet was not a breakthrough product. Apple chose to create a phone and an ecosystem of applications around it. Once that was established they took the same ecosystem of applications to the tablet and made it into a killer device itself.

There are two important things here – choice of the right technology, at the right time, for the right device and the ability of Apple to shelf an overwhelming technology for years together in order to introduce it at the right time to make the most business sense.

The result is that both products and the applications in the iOS/iTunes ecosystem are selling faster than hot cakes. They are selling an iPad every three seconds. Would this have happened if they had introduced the iPad first?

We all know that business trumps technology, but it is most important that we do not let go of the technology and the people who will make it happen to keep the bench warm and ready to go.

THE AUTHOR IS Executive Editor, CTO Forum