1999-2003 : 

Working with technology, starting from an early interest at a exploratory stage when at school/ early stages of my career, I was lucky to be around, when one of the most revolutionary networking democratizations was happening, I was fortunate to work on Windows NT servers, first for a small dotcom startup (Roar Technologies) under a revolutionary entrepreneur  Sharad Bansal back in 1999, and subsequently with a massively smart and  super capable revolutionary team at the Big Blue IBM on enterprise scale Large BPO call centres in India.

I was managing infrastructure (the datacentre, voice and data connectivity LAN, WAN, and BCP DRP for a 600 seat BPO (iDLX). My second gig project with the Big Blue was managing a 3,500 computer and systems, network, and data and printers  infrastructure for StandardChartered. 

My next role was at the GenPact’s GECIS22A, India’s largest call centre at that time working on integrating KANA‘s  eCRM to a high traffic 300 seat floor managing JC Penny and Walmart‘s 2 due’s and 3-7 dues at  Gurgaon (now Gurugram). This role involved managing a high throughput IBM X-Series servers coupled with Sun Solaris servers interfacing to the mainframe and the dialler.   

Working with the brightest minds at that time with the customers, vendors, and our agents, resolving IPLC’s and Line printers it was a hectic but interesting times. 

In my last opportunity in India I had the privilege of  working in a 8- seat call and data centre which expanded to a 300 seat data centre in the time that I was there. It might seem interesting now looking back how we were managing calls on a 64Kbps circut (upto 8 calls there and data on a 256 Kbps IPLC’s . The dramas of SEA-ME-WE3 and the flakiness of the 512 satellite backup!!. Those were the days. 

It is funny how you do not realise the significance of the opportunities while you are in the moment. Science and technology and the pace of change is super exciting.