The first quarter results of India's information technology majors show more than a weak global recovery. They need a paradigm shift in their functioning, say bye-bye to lazy browsing of low-hanging fruit.

New markets, of which the domestic market would be the most notable one, and a more aggressive focus on consulting-led, business solutions are the way forward for IT services. Infosys has merged Infosys Consulting with itself, showing that the industry is alive to the need.

Thorough knowledge of the customer's business domain and business practices and keen appreciation of emerging business challenges, combined with new technological possibilities and understanding of the kind of organisational restructuring that would be required to align the client to the new way of doing business in a more efficient, competitive fashion: IT service providers would need to mix these ingredients to come up with innovative solutions that they then have to market to their clients. Out of the four ingredients, they are presently at home only with IT capability.