Mentorship Works

Mentorship Works

Leaders who aspire to influence and shape the next generation of leaders look for young minds to share their experience with. ASEI MentorConnect is one such avenue to build connections with leaders, drive meaningful relationships and grow your leadership muscle. The first cohort of this structured program was launched earlier this year and will continue to invest time in those looking to learn from established mentors in the industry. MentorConnect is a benefit that the professional ASEI members can avail of every year getting matched with a mentor from their own industry and is based on an initial screening process at the start of each cohort.
In a way mentoring is a two way street and the ASEI MentorConnect made it possible for both mentors and mentees to gain from this experience as is evident from the success stories shared by participants at the culmination of the cohort last month. Here are a few testimonials from some of our mentees this year:

Muthu Sivanantham (Mentor: Mani Sundarajan) (Profile: People leader with 25 years of experience)

“Thanks to his valuable inputs and simple steps to help me with my goals setting, I was able to set these two leadership goals for this year:

  • Display leadership and make a dent in our Solution Offers for year 2021
  • Promote, lead and make significant contributions in a launch of a Leadership Program that my employer launched this year

In both of the above objectives I am proud to say I had been making significant contributions. Thanks to ASEI’s MentorConnect program which was a catalyst to make this happen. I would be remiss not to mention the ASEI network as a whole which is an excellent platform to network, learn from, and share knowledge with a wide variety of like minded Engineers & Science and Tech folks.”

Saravanan Venkatachalam (Mentor – K V Prasad) Profile: Technical expert with 20 years of experience)

“I have created a draft 30-60-90 day plan for leadership role (Emulation) and walked through with Prasad, with minor correction from Prasad, i have tried to adopt wherever applicable and proactively started leading without title in certain areas and which helped me to build some allies in shared services areas. I got few spirit awards from other shared service partners for value add activities and also this month there was an org announcement that going forward i will be reporting directly to my Domain CIO, which will provide me more face time with the likes of Chief Architect, Digital CTO, Business directors, CTO and CIO to learn and contribute and grow.”

Hemanth Aroumougam (Mentor: Abhiram Iyengar) Profile: Recent Engineering graduate, Purdue University

“I really enjoyed being a part of the MentorConnect Program. My mentor was Mr. Abhiram Iyengar and I had two 1-hour sessions with him. From just the two sessions, it was a great opportunity for me to learn a lot from him. I was able to get tips to improve the structure of my resume, obtained more knowledge about good strategies to tackle the recruitment process in the US, learnt a lot about his experiences and many more.  Thank you so much for giving me the valuable opportunity to be a part of this MentorConnect Program.”

Ranganath Gurram (Mentor Sham Kunjur) Profile: Manufacturing Engineer, early in career

“Though it is the first year, ASEI has succeeded in making sure MentorConnect serves its purpose, ‘To enable professional and personal networking relationships between mentor and mentee in a safe environment to share life experiences and guidance for professional and career development.

As someone like me who is in the initial stages of the career, this program will widen the career outlook. My mentor Sham Kunjur was very welcoming and approachable. I could learn a ton from his years of experience in the industry. I gained valuable insights to shape not only my professional goals but also personal goals. Many thanks to the ASEI team for this wonderful program, my mentor Sham Kunjur for all the time and support over the last few months, and Srinivas Gavini who introduced me to ASEI !! “

In addition to all of these practical tips and mentee experiences, we would like to leave you with 2 reading suggestions from our esteemed mentors on leadership:

Designing your life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

 

Invisible Women 

Sai Gopisetty is an ASEI member based out of Michigan and helps with coordinating  our MentorConnect program.

Leadership Positions Open

Leadership Positions Open- Seeking Nominations For The 2022 National Board

Dear ASEI Members,

The National Board of ASEI needs to conduct its election to fill the 2022 Board of Directors open positions. In accordance with section VI.2 of the constitution, we have appointed the following Board members to the Election Committee: 

Election Committee Chairperson: Jwalant Lakhia

Election Committee Members:  Dr. Thomas Abraham &  Suresh Ladva

Hence, the purpose of this communication is to request nominations from the membership for the ASEI National Board of Directors. There are seven open positions that will be filled through this nomination process.

You can self-nominate or nominate someone else for the ASEI National Board position. If nominating someone else, please get concurrence from your nominee before submitting the nomination.

To be eligible to become a board member, the nominee must be an ASEI paid member in good standing for one year, must have participated in ASEI activities at local or national level, and must have exhibited leadership qualities from experiences that would add significant value to the board and ASEI. The nominee must be ready and willing to participate in all (or almost all) board meetings and contribute by participating in ASEI activities including membership of various committees of ASEI. The nominees should become familiar with ASEI Constitution and Bylaws available at www.aseiusa.org   

Please click here to submit your nomination. The deadline to submit nominations is now extended till December 19th, 2021.

Sincerely,

Executive Committee of the ASEI National Board of Directors:

Piyush Malik –         President

Jwalant Lakhia –      Vice President

Ram Ramanujam –   Treasurer

Vatsala Upadhyaya – Secretary & IT Director

CELEBRATING THE FIRST NON-WHITE NOBEL WINNER IN SCIENCE

Celebrating The First Non-white Nobel Winner In Science

The Nobel Prize in Physics 1930 was awarded to Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman “for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him.”

More details on Sir CV Raman and his work from the Nobel website.

There is a story that we would like to share here. Dr. C.V. Raman didn’t have money to buy a spectrograph. So he shot a letter to G.D. Birla stating his demand in no less clear words: “Give me money to buy a spectrograph. And if you give me the money, I promise I will bring the Nobel Prize in one year.” G.D. Birla fulfilled Raman’s demand. And the rest is history.

Dr. C.V. Raman, who’s birthday is today (November 7th) , went on to become the first non-white nobel laureate in any field of science.

“When you want something with utmost intensity, the universe conspires in helping you get it”.

Diwali-2021

HAPPY DIWALI! + NOVEMBER 2021 NEWSLETTER

Greetings!

Wish you a very happy and prosperous Diwali! Did you know that there’s a tech industry connection in getting a USPS  Diwali stamp ? Also, did you know how technology is making Diwali really happy for small mom-and pop retailers? All this and more in our newsletter that was sent out to all members at the beginning of this month.

The November   2021 edition of ASEI Newsletter was sent to all those who are on our mailing list till Oct  end. In case you missed it, here is the web version.  We also try to post it on our social media handles so you may want to engage with us there directly for swift interations.

Happy reading and catching up on all that happened in the last month and what lies ahead with your society!

ASEI is a volunteer run professional organization and we welcome your involvement. We request feedback and especially welcome any articles, blogs or ideas you would like to contribute. Please be in touch with anyone from the content/editorial team. 

In case you are  not receiving our emails, please check your spam/junk or promotions folder and change the settings in your mailbox to deliver ASEI emails in your in-box. If you still did not find our newsletter please send an email to [email protected] for us to investigate. 

AI

October Is All About Innovation Through Design – The Newsletter Covers AI, Cloud, University Connect And Fun Events Too

  • The October 2021 edition of ASEI Newsletter was sent  to all those who are on our mailing list till September end. In case you missed it, here is the web version. Happy reading and catching up on all that happened in the last month and what lies ahead with your society! We have a series of events planned for this month representing #Innovation #Design,  #Youth Empowerment,  Knowledge sharing and Networking initiatives.
  • ASEI is a volunteer run professional organization and we welcome your involvement. We request feedback and especially welcome any articles, blogs or ideas you would like to contribute. Please be in touch with anyone from the content/editorial team.
  • In case you are  not receiving our emails, please check your spam/junk or promotions folder and change the settings in your mailbox to deliver ASEI emails in your in-box. If you still did not find our newsletter please send an email to [email protected] for us to investigate.
Oct 2021

REMINDER

Don’t forget to join and subscribe to #asei Youtube channel to be reminded and notified when we livestream. We are also adopting new channels of communication including an open Linkedin page, Twitter, Facebook and Clubhouse to connect with you. Do join in, provide feedback and volunteer to  get engaged.
Sept Newsletter 2021

Did You Get Our September Newsletter And Lineup Of Upcoming Events ?

The September  2021 edition of ASEI Newsletter was sent in the beginning of this month to all those who are on our mailing list till August end. In case you missed it, here is the web version. Happy reading and catching up on all that happened in the last month and what lies ahead with your society! We have a series of events planned for this month representing #YouthEmpowerment , #University Connect as well as Knowledge sharing and Networking initiatives

ASEI is a volunteer run professional organization and we welcome your involvement. We request feedback and especially welcome any articles, blogs or ideas you would like to contribute. Please be in touch with anyone from the content/editorial team. 

In case you are  not receiving our emails, please check your spam/junk or promotions folder and change the settings in your mailbox to deliver ASEI emails in your in-box. If you still did not find our newsletter please send an email to [email protected] for us to investigate.

REMINDER

Don’t forget to join and subscribe to #asei Youtube channel to be reminded and notified when we livestream. We are also adopting new channels of communication including an open Linkedin page, Twitter, Facebook and Clubhouse to connect with you. Do join in, provide feedback and volunteer to  get engaged. More info on our upcoming program this week is below :

EMERGING TRENDS AND PROMISE OF CLOUD IN THE POST COVID ERA

Emerging Trends And Promise Of Cloud In The Post Covid Era (Part 2)

(Part 1 covering “Why Cloud and Why now” was published here . This is part 2 of a point of view by the authors to give an overview of the cloud market and emerging opportunities in this second  article of a  multi  part series on cloud computing and application modernization as we explore and reason what has changed in the past 18 months and what does the post-pandemic era have in store for the cloud vendors and customers. )

Regulatory hurdles and concerns dissolve when you adopt Privacy and Security by design

In our experience, the biggest roadblocks for enterprises to accelerate cloud consumption are runaway costs and compliance/security concerns. Survey by IDG Cloud Computing (referred in part 1) validates this as well. 

Compliance and security concerns: One of the key concerns raised is the inability to protect sensitive data in the cloud. To overcome this concern, in addition to encryption of data in transit or at rest cloud providers have also started providing the ability to encrypt data even while it is in use i.e. while it’s being processed. There is no one-size-fits-all solution but cloud providers are working hard to provide “engineered-in, invisible security” that protects even the most sensitive data in the cloud. Public cloud providers are also providing offerings based on a zero-trust framework that will help governments be in compliance with President Joe Biden’s recent executive order on improving cybersecurity.

Cost: While the pay per use cost model and ease of provisioning is a great advantage of the public cloud model, it also means  that organizations that do not have a robust cost management practice are unable to build accurate cost estimates and are often faced with runaway charges in their monthly invoice.  The complexity of pricing, billing & cost attribution for public cloud services adds to this challenge.  However, public cloud providers have cost management tools that provide a holistic overview of costs with the cloud provider,  cost savings/right sizing recommendations, ability to set budget alerts and much more. By building a FinOps practice around them, enterprises can  derive cost savings that directly contribute to their bottom line.   

Industry matters  – Industry segments that are bullish on the cloud

Cloud computing is now intrinsic to businesses across almost all sectors. We will highlight some industry segments which have shown a lot of momentum and  continue to hold promise for the future:

Digital Native companies that exist primarily online and are “”born in the cloud”, naturally lead in the adoption of ever evolving cloud technologies. Their infrastructures are already cloud-based, they are usually the first to adopt emerging cloud technologies and are able to derive maximum benefits from the cloud. This is much harder for traditional enterprises owing to their legacy technology, slower processes, staff skill mix and longer technology learning curves etc. Below is an example of how Box is leveraging Google Cloud’s advanced capabilities to enhance the scale, performance, and the intelligence of its cloud content management platform globally.

Retailers across the board are playing catch up to meet the evolving consumer needs for next-generation personalized experiences that blend the physical & virtual worlds and cloud is a critical enabler to make this happen. Retailers also need to be agile to adapt to sudden changes in demand especially during “surge demand periods” such as traditional holiday driven or seasonal fashion swings. To be able to do this, moving IT systems for retailers to the cloud is critical. Here’s an example of how retailer Kroger adopted Cloud to gain deeper insights into their business rapidly in a scalable fashion.

Public sector adoption has been relatively sporadic and low but is slowly picking up with government agencies in the US and across the world. Cloud providers continue to add to their certifications and compliance standards to meet needs of governments. Public health agencies at state and local government level have awakened and the need for quick and nimble apps such as covid contact detection, notification and vaccine distribution and post covid campus reopening led them to believe the transformational nature of cloud. Here’s an example of such solutions SpringML team has implemented  with Google Cloud technologies across the US Public sector and has even been recognized for a vast variety of impactful implementations.

In the case of the manufacturing industry, driven by early adopters of Industry 4.0 frameworks and now data-driven organizations embracing predictive technologies,  cloud is enabling new use cases across the value chain. Following are a few examples – 

Operational insights to invent more efficient ways of working on the shop floor

Resilient supply chain that can adapt to whatever uncertainty and disruption  is thrown at it, experts collaborating across factories

Engineers solving complex problems using large scale simulations

Solutions predicting machine failure and much more. 

This is being made possible by the access to innovation that hyperscalers are providing in their platforms in areas such as AI/ML, IoT, Analytics, Speech recognition, optimized computing resources on demand etc. 

Organizations in the Healthcare and Life Science industry are also adopting cloud technologies rapidly across the value chain. For example, they are leveraging cloud technology for real time collaboration to accelerate research efforts, sharing health data seamlessly across authorized providers & unlocking value from the data in real time to enhance patient care, deriving operational efficiency through pay per use models enabling them to reduce cost of care etc. As an example,  pharmaceutical and health care company McKesson migrated siloed legacy infrastructure to use high-performing Google Cloud databases to get the most out of their data and ultimately deliver a better healthcare experience to patients.

Wrapping up

Human species haven’t stopped innovating since the early days of human civilization. The need for automation has been increasing historically since the Renaissance and days of the industrial revolution when the printing press replaced handwritten manuscripts. We are said to be in the fourth wave of industrial revolution since 2010 but the post Covid-era could be labelled Industry 5.0 ! The remarkable  pace of adoption of innovation and automation across industries especially with a customer service component can certainly be attributed to COVID induced lockdowns and fresh thinking and introspection when almost within weeks companies digitally transformed and  devised strategies to enable remote work for most of their employees without missing a beat. That would not have been possible without the progress in Internet, cloud computing and automation technologies in the past two decades. Since  2020  we increasingly come across exciting real life success stories  of Customer Service Innovation (e.g. Call Center AI ), Voice based user experience interfaces (e.g. Chatbots) and a plethora of AI/ML use case adoption (predictive maintenance, autonomous driving, advanced robotics etc to name a few). The common denominator is advancement in cloud technologies and its rapid adoption. The cloud market is growing fast and as various analyst reports have stated and is already huge but we are just getting started and may only have touched  less than 10% of its potential. We will deep dive further in subsequent articles in this series. 

 

About the Authors:

Himanshu Kapoor is a Customer Success & Professional Services Executive with extensive background in leading technology led transformation for clients and client facing teams at leading organizations like IBM, Cisco Infosys and currently Google. In addition to his expertise in Go To Market Strategy, he brings a deep understanding of public cloud platforms like Google Cloud & AWS. 

Piyush Malik is a veteran of data-driven  business transformations across multiple industry domains having served customers worldwide & leading multicultural teams spread over 40 countries and  helping with digital transformation, cloud adoption and applied data science/AI/ML journeys. Having served in strategy, management consulting and application software leadership roles at PWC,IBM, Cadence Design in US as well as product management with Tata group in India, he is currently a SVP at  SpringML,  a Premier Google Partner, besides being active with several industry bodies and non-profits including ASEI.

Engineers Day

Happy Engineer’s Day

Sir M. Visvesvaraya was an eminent civil engineer, a scholar and a statesman who was awarded India’s highest civilian honor Bharat Ratna in 1955. He is credited with inventing the automated steel doors that close the water overflows in dams. Sept 15th, his birth anniversary is celebrated as Engineer’s Day.

Feel free to engage with us socially on Linkedin or Twitter to tell us about your #engineering hero 

Dedicated to all engineering friends in the US, India and beyond, Happy Engineer’s day!

Youth Corner: Who Is Sania Jain – Environmentalist, Inventor , Author Or Entrepreneur?

A creative writing course she later took during her third grade allowed her to channel her love for nature into writing when she published her first book, called, “The Great Forest Adventure”. Her parents tapped into her love for writing and encouraged it, allowing her to publish four more books on various topics.

Wow! As if that was not enough, Sania’s endless creativity has led to several inventions and innovations. This includes SaniaBox, an add-on board “raspberry pi” kit to explore circuits and coding, and even a non-profit called Copper Bottles Series that spreads awareness about global warming, animal poaching, and ocean pollution.

When asked how she was able to achieve so many things at such a young age, Sania humbly attributes her success to the support she has received from organizations like Moonshot Jr and many individuals who helped bring her ideas to life. That is why she believes in organizations like ASEI that help connect professionals together. With ASEI, Sania hopes to continue inspiring other kids to create, persevere, and try new things.

This article is based on conversations Aditya Guthey, an ASEI Silicon Valley chapter member and a career coach has had with Sania Jain for ASEI Youth Corner. A short excerpt is here  ASEI has a partnership with MoonshotJr – a Silicon Valley based startup that accelerates youths’ path from STEM education to entrepreneurship. Click to avail special offers for ASEI community.

PROMISE OF CLOUD IN THE POST COVID ERA

Emerging Trends And Promise Of Cloud In The Post Covid Era – Part-1

This is a point of view by the authors to give an overview of the cloud market and emerging opportunities in this first article of a  multi  part series on cloud computing and application modernization as we explore and reason what has changed in the past 18 months and what does the post-pandemic era have in store for the cloud vendors and customers. 

Introduction

The pace of digitization accelerated nearly 7X globally during the pandemic, as huge portions of the economy moved to digital channels and these trends are here to last. Cloud infrastructure is a critical enabler for this digital transformation and in the post pandemic world this trend of cloud adoption is only going to accelerate. As per a study by Gartner,  worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecasted to grow 18.4% in 2021 to total $304.9 billion, up from $257.5 billion in 2020. Cloud is projected to make up 14.2% of the total global enterprise IT spending market in 2024, up from 9.1% in 2020. 

 However, a more granular view gives a better assessment of what happened, and where the trend lines are headed. In a report from CloudHealth, here are a few takeaways:

  • Total cloud spending increased in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the leap in 2020 was not huge. This was partly owing to the free services offered by cloud providers during the pandemic and the cost optimization measures enforced by organizations in a bid to control operational expenses. However, in 2021 a significant jump of 18% is forecasted by Gartner in end user spending on cloud services. 
  • Spending on compute services, which is by far the biggest spend, actually decreased in the same period
  • Container usage saw a big increase in 2020, even in verticals that saw decreased total cloud spending. Increasingly enterprises are looking into moving applications from physical hardware and virtual machines (VM) into containers and deriving benefits such as increased portability, faster application development & deployment etc.
  • Cloud vendors and their System Integrator partners are focussed on helping customers derive the maximum value from their cloud investments, with  strategic consulting and operational offerings.

Why Cloud and Why now ?

 The pandemic has brought to the forefront a number of fundamental shifts which are driving growth in cloud adoption, few examples:

  • Increased focus on business continuity planning & agility in the business
  • Increased demand for e-commerce, e-learning, telehealth, video-on-demand etc
  • Explosion in demand for remote work, hybrid work will continue to be the preferred model in the post-Covid world.
  • Dramatic swings in demand cycles increasing the importance for pay per use models.

Conversations with enterprises on the rationale for moving to the cloud is now much broader than simply saving costs & having a better infrastructure. It is now about cloud making the business more adaptable & agile, about enabling innovation, reinvention and growth. Public cloud providers continue to make huge investments to enhance their platforms and move up the stack providing key capabilities that enterprises had to earlier build themselves. This is allowing enterprises to focus on capabilities that truly drive innovation & differentiation in their business. There are still some enterprises in the early stages of cloud adoption that are migrating workloads to the cloud solely for cheaper compute & storage. They are doing a simple lift & shift of their on-premises workloads to the cloud and are often disappointed with the ROI unless they include other critical aspects of the cloud migration such as automation of IT processes, leveraging cloud native technologies, cloud ecosystems and marketplaces etc. 

The trend of companies adopting  multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategy continues to accelerate, almost all large enterprises are deploying workloads on more than one public cloud while also keeping some data on private clouds if necessary owing to data residency/sensitivity, regulations, latency and other reasons. Per an IDG Cloud Computing Survey, over half  (55%) of organizations who have embraced cloud,   currently use multiple public clouds, with 21% saying they use three or more. This is further corroborated by analysts at IDC who project that more than 90% of enterprises will use a mix of public, private and on-premises environments by 2022. That said, the disruption of traditional IT caused by cloud computing is here to stay and we should be moving from fear-uncertainty and disinformation (FUD) and chaos during the pandemic to a rapid and  orderly adoption and refactoring of traditional applications in the post pandemic era.

Looking forward

Human species haven’t stopped innovating since the early days of human civilization. The need for automation has been increasing historically since the Renaissance and days of the industrial revolution when the printing press replaced handwritten manuscripts. We are said to be in the fourth wave of industrial revolution since 2010 but the post Covid-era could be labelled Industry 5.0 ! The remarkable  pace of adoption of innovation and automation across industries especially with a customer service component can certainly be attributed to COVID induced lockdowns and fresh thinking and introspection when almost within weeks companies digitally transformed and  devised strategies to enable remote work for most of their employees without missing a beat. That would not have been possible without the progress in Internet, cloud computing and automation technologies in the past two decades. Since  2020  we increasingly come across exciting real life success stories  of Customer Service Innovation (e.g. Call Center AI ), Voice based user experience interfaces (e.g. Chatbots) and a plethora of AI/ML use case adoption (predictive maintenance, autonomous driving, advanced robotics etc to name a few). The common denominator is advancement in cloud technologies and its rapid adoption. The cloud market is growing fast and as various analyst reports have stated and is already huge but we are just getting started and may only have touched  less than 10% of its potential. We will deep dive further in subsequent articles in this series. 

About the Authors:

Himanshu Kapoor is a Customer Success & Professional Services Executive with extensive background in leading technology led transformation for clients and client facing teams at leading organizations like IBM, Cisco Infosys and currently Google. In addition to his expertise in Go To Market Strategy, he brings a deep understanding of public cloud platforms like Google Cloud & AWS. 


Piyush Malik is a veteran of data-driven  business transformations across multiple industry domains having served customers worldwide & leading multicultural teams spread over 40 countries and  helping with digital transformation, cloud adoption and applied data science/AI/ML journeys. Having served in strategy, management consulting and application software leadership roles at PWC,IBM, Cadence Design in US as well as product management with Tata group in India, he is currently a SVP at  SpringML,  a Premier Google Partner, besides being active with several industry bodies and non-profits including ASEI

This article is based on conversations Aditya Guthey, an ASEI Silicon Valley chapter member and a career coach has had with Sania Jain for ASEI Youth Corner. A short excerpt is here  ASEI has a partnership with MoonshotJr – a Silicon Valley based startup that accelerates youths’ path from STEM education to entrepreneurship. Click to avail special offers for ASEI community.