"The next shift is in the miniaturisation, which has brought in the concept of anytime, anywhere computing," he added. The Internet and the intranets are parts of the concept of anytime, anywhere computing.

These were giving rise to services such as home-shopping and tele-commuting, among other things, he said.

"The decision-making process has changed as well - from the boardroom to the e-mail decisions, with people doing things at a time convenient to themselves but in harmony with others. Cycle time is being compressed and speed has become God in today's world, with virtualisation becoming the norm," hesaid.

In today's world, it was possible for the customer or the employee of the corporation to be in touch with the corporation anytime and anywhere, he said.

The virtual bookshop, Amazon, according to Narayanamurthy, is a prime example of virtualisation where the company is selling more books than any of the other book companies in the United States.

"Slowly we might find that service-provider jobs are shrinking and more are done by computers and similar gizmos with chips embedded in them," he said.The concept of globalisation has changed too. In fact, today it means that you manufacture at the place where it is the cheapest and sell at the place where you have your best market, Narayanamurthy pointed out.

This trend, he said, was against the normal way multinationals functioned, by starting subsidiaries in new markets that manufacture for those markets.