Chance favors prepared mind. Here is to a new beginning!

It is time to take on a new challenge and I am thrilled about it!

People who have been in touch with me know well that I wanted to make use of the break during Covid-19 for two important things.

Travel had always been part of my career. Running my startup and recently at Dell, international travel earned me the opportunity to meet and make new friends. Without a second thought, I just enjoyed what I did at Dell and I had time of my life running my startup. However, I also carried a growing resentment that I missed some of my kids’ moments. Both Rajeev and Rohan are 18 and 16 and will be moving out to pursue their colleges starting this fall. I was able to make use of this break to catch up and it was worth it by the minute!

You all know the passion I have for analytics and AI/ML. I have been fortunate to have had a career spanning industrial analytics, database technology, AI/ML and IIOT. I consider myself lucky to have grown with this eco-system and for most part, evolution of these technologies. I am a firm believer that AI/ML will be the underlying enabler for next industrial revolution. This break helped me to understand these technologies and the eco-system at depth.

I carry indelible sense of gratitude to god for all this experience at just a critical juncture in my life. Having rebooted, its time now to take on a new ride.

I will be joining Microsoft to lead the Cloud Scale Analytics business unit globally. In this role, I will oversee the Cloud Scale Analytics business end to end from leading the sales strategy to field execution. Simply, my charter is to accelerate and grow the global market share of Azure Cloud Scale Analytics offerings.

Everyone of our customers is undergoing their digital transformation. Insights through analytics and automation through AI/ML are integral to this transformation. Microsoft has the breadth of capabilities to accelerate this transformation with best time to value proposition and I am excited about the impact I can make in this role.  

While I am excited about my new challenge, it is extremely important to me that I remember and acknowledge the many and varying contribution of my mentors and friends at Dell. Quite simply, they helped me to evolve and stood with me at critical times with their unconditional support. My new chapter begins with sincere gratitude to them. 

Prakash Rangaraju Michael McDonough Matt Barrington Chris Wolff Patricia Florissi Neal Kohl Chris Romano Aditi Tiwari Paul Conway Joe DosSantos Siddharth Tiwari Patrick Wolff Chandra Venkatapathy and not the least Chitra Nagaratnam!

Thank you for everything! Here is to a new beginning!