IMT Ghaziabad: Rajiv Sodhi Talks About Cloud Computing And Career Choices

Ghaziabad (I-Newswire) January 16, 2012 - Rajiv Sodhi’s focus at Microsoft, where he is Director, SMB, is on driving sales and marketing of Cloud solutions, incubation of new initiatives and business development. He drives cross-company programs and initiatives as well and his shoulders carry various other responsibilities.

Rajiv Sodhi addressed the Executive PDGM students of IMT Ghaziabad, and discussed aspects of Cloud Computing in the Indian context.
“Typically, Indian SMBs did not invest a lot in IT but that is reversing. More and more SMBs are adopting Cloud technology, today. In India the growth is going to be much higher,” Sodhi began with a prediction.

However, challenges make the growth of any sector that much more rewarding. Cloud Computing too has a bunch of issues that need to be overcome – most of them are related to adapting to something new. “The first biggest challenge is for businesses to understand where to use Cloud Computing in their entire IT needs: in their core services or non-core services. The second is concerns around security, reliability etc. The third is the commercial part: pricing, payment terms, what is the SLA going to be, what happens if the Cloud service goes down? Monthly or quarterly payments? Which department to take on Cloud? How will it be secure, safe and reliable?” Rajiv Sodhi said.

Once those concerns are overcome, Cloud Computing could bring about a better entrepreneurship experience for new and existing entrepreneurs. “Today it is far easier to start a company and get the basic infrastructure running because Cloud offers it on demand almost immediately. In the previous world you had to set up your entire infrastructure – email, conferencing etc.” He said. If the company is not doing well, it is easy to shut off as well. There is no sunk cost on it.

If it is an IT company that is offering services to industry, they do not have to set up an entire infrastructure. The company can buy the infrastructure from a Cloud provider and scale up or scale down as the need arises. The pace of innovation has increased from the time that Cloud Computing has increased. It gives more opportunities for companies to start up while making it easy for them to offer their services in the market.

To keep up with market demands and choices, Microsoft has Evangelists who are on the forefront of technology. “Typically their focus on next generation technology which are not released or are soon to be released in the market. They create buzz around whatever technology is coming,” Sodhi clarified. So, when the technology is released in the market there is an awareness of it already.

“Evangelists are also very good resources who interact with customers in a non-obtrusive manner and get a feedback and real insights as to what the customer wants and pass the feedback to the product team at Microsoft,” he pointed out. This communication works both ways. “I think it is an important function,” Sodhi observed.

Rajiv Sodhi enjoyed his interactions at IMT Ghaziabad with PGDM Executive students a great deal and ended his visit with a promise to return.

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