“I Found Myself Surrounded By People Who Were Highly Technical”

Technology has evolved a lot in last two decades and we all have witnessed the major transformation in the digital world. Today all individuals or even large organizations are depended a lot on different technology products or solutions to execute their day to day activities. Behind all these innovations, there are huge strength of R&D team across all industries who work in a great spirit to make life easier for all of us.  This whole journey is a result of pure dedication of those engineers who aspire to innovate for the future. Mr. Prasoon Kumar Sinha, Distinguished Engineer at Dell Technologies interacted recently with Rajeev Ranjan, Editor & Publisher, Digital Terminal and shared his overall journey as an engineer in an exclusive interaction. Read below the excerpt:  

DT: Could you please share a brief about your role at Dell Technologies? How you are helping the organization to move forward from a growth perspective?

Mr. Prasoon: I am a distinguished engineer in the ISG- Infrastructure solutions group at Dell Technologies, which deals with developing the system management software for servers. My expertise lies in areas of power management for servers and other management consoles related to how we link them to our third party connections.

My focus is primarily to make sure that our software's are keeping up with latest technological developments that happen around each of these solutions and how we can develop our servers better. We try to work with some organizations and some advanced engineering groups just to make sure that we stay prepared for what is coming. We want to make sure that our tools are suited to how our organization is and how the future of the data center is evolving.

DT: What inspired you in school days to take up engineering as a career goal?

Mr. Prasoon: My father worked in ISRO, his work was to develop rockets all the time due to which I found myself surrounded by people who were highly technical and had a knack for science. This inspired me to pursue my Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Engineering, Banaras Hindu University. 

DT: What was the initial job that you took after completing you engineering?

Mr. Prasoon: I worked for 16 years at Cadence Design Systems in the areas of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) design capture tools. At Cadence, I was key to design and development of several products, defining the next generation mixed design entry paradigms. I also owned key infrastructure platform components over which most PCB Design Software's are based on.

DT: What according to you are the three major technology innovations that have changed the way we do business in today's world?

Mr. Prasoon: Three major technology innovations, which have changed the way we do business, are:

1. We have moved to a more connected and distributed world today rather than having a narrow focus and outlook on things.
2. Collaboration between organizations is a new trend that has emerged in the recent years. There is no more one solution from one company anymore. If a customer is looking for a solution then they will have multiple vendors, which will be able to offer those solutions For example, for an application to work, multiple parties are involved at the back end to support it and help in its smooth functioning.
3. Today, increased focus around security is one of the major concerns and one of the major areas of activity. In the context of this connected world, with many distributed interactions, you want to make sure that you are secure.

DT: What is your advice for the young aspirants who want to become successful engineer?

Mr. Prasoon: In the earlier times, there was just one stream; computer science which you could choose if you wanted a career in engineering, but nowadays you have the option of specialization in fields like Artificial Intelligence, IOT, Analytics and Data Sciences among others. It is a great time for those to get into these specific fields, as there is a lot of demand for professionals from these fields. This demand is not just from the IT industry but many other and diverse industries, which are also looking at employing people with these specializations.

DT: How do you train new engineers at Dell Technologies?

Mr. Prasoon: Training is a very essential part of the culture at Dell Technologies. We hold trainings for new engineers, who are on boarded from college or otherwise. It is very important for us to tune what they have learned freshly out of college according to our ecosystem. Most importantly, training in terms of mentorship and coaching happens in all levels and not just the new entrants. At any point of time, you are mentoring 3-5 people to help them realize their potential and help them grow. This is a part of the culture at Dell Technologies.

DT: What are the three major technology which an enterprise cannot afford to miss in year 2020?

Mr. Prasoon: In my view, some of the emerging technologies, which are gaining attraction across the world, are:

• Edge computing– The ability to process more data from where it is being generated instead of sending it back to a data center to be able to process it. Companies now days want data processed in the same location from where it is generated.
• IoT– We have seen many intelligent devices that are automatic and are changing the way we live.
• AI/ML– As more organizations create data, they will definitely want some business results and statistics out of that data. We have yet not entered into the stage where we can say that we have mastered the art of generating value from our data. However, people have started valuing this information, which is driving a lot of need for computational power to be able to derive value from data.

When it comes to established technologies, containerization is a piece of technology that a lot of customers and vendors are looking at leveraging.