 "<b>Tea with BS:</b> Suresh Vaswani, President, Dell Services")
Nine months into his job as president of the $8.5-billion Dell Services - the US technology giant's biggest bet to transform its business from just a products company to an end-to-end solutions provider - Suresh Vaswani, 53, says he feels like a 25-year-old all over again. Reason: he is adapting to a new life in Plano, Texas, just like his son is doing in the UK. "The only difference is while I have a big job, he is still studying," he adds, grinning from ear to ear, as we settle down at the Vista, the all-day dining room at Taj Lands End in Mumbai's Bandra, writes Shyamal Majumdar.
It's like being reborn, Vaswani says. Apart from guiding the transformation of Dell, the new life has meant learning left-hand driving, shopping alone, cooking omelettes and, lately, fried rice, and spending time with a group of friends who are all non-Indians - things he had never done during his 25-year professional life in India. "It's like the main character in the film English Vinglish [where Sri Devi goes to the US as an under-confident Indian lady but adjusts swiftly to become more self-assured]. I am much less spoilt now and have become much more independent," Vaswani, who spent 25 years in Wipro before joining Dell in 2011, says. He orders bhajiya, an assortment of fried vegetables, something he misses in the US.
He has come straight from the airport after a long journey - first from Beijing to Hong Kong where he missed the plane to Mumbai and landed in Bangalore and then had to take a connecting flight to his original destination. Despite all this, he reached 15 minutes earlier than our scheduled meeting time and manages to look fresh and eager for his first meeting with a media person in India after more than eight months.
But I try once again: he must have been hurt by the sudden action on the part of Wipro? Vaswani picks a deep-fried chilly and bites hard, but refuses to utter the "W" word even once. All that he would say is that he is lucky to have "lived life twice" and whatever happens, happens for the best as he has got a fantastic opportunity to lead a global business. In any case, he says he is no longer dealing with just services around the (hardware) box, but in many other segments of the market. "You can't be a single-trick pony. The world is changing fast and it's no more only about outsourcing," he adds, ordering lemon tea.
What he likes particularly about Dell is that there is no command and control kind of management. "I have learnt to respect my reportees, because a buy-in is very important. The ultimate boss makes sure all of us are closely aligned to the overall strategy of the company; so there is more stress on engagement. It's not like in the army culture where the boss is the general and the reportees are colonels," Vaswani says. The "W" word still remains unsaid.
The other thing he loves about working in the US is nobody there cares about your age, unlike in India where you are "considered dead if you are above 50".
Vaswani is obviously keen to drive home the point that he is enjoying every bit of his life at Dell. That explains his remarks that he should have perhaps made the transition to a global company much earlier in life. Vaswani says he was at an inflection point in his career and had very interesting options, but what drew him to Dell was its transformation story and the idea of working directly under an inspirational chairman like Michael Dell. A big reason for his "enjoyment" is, of course, the opportunity to head Dell Services and entry into the global Executive Leadership team in December last year - much before he had expected. He had joined the company as chairman, Dell India and leader of the applications & BPO organisations, but the big opportunity came after his predecessor, Steve Schuckenbrock, stepped down suddenly after barely a year in the role to pursue his interest in health care.
He asks the steward for a second helping of the bhajiya (the first plate had disappeared in no time) and a fresh round of tea and gets down to explaining in detail the transformation that Dell is going through.
Dell, he says, has positioned itself as an end-to-end solutions provider that has evolved from a PC manufacturer into an information technology (IT) solutions partner to its customers. Previously a provider of next-to-the box or support services, the acquisition of Perot Systems in 2009 gave it the required push.
Though the need for transformation was prompted by the pressure on its mainline PC business, there is no denying that the US giant is taking its job seriously; its customer-focused attitude indeed led to the creation of the Social Media Command Center, a venture that not only anticipated the importance of social media before many companies had even considered Twitter campaigns but also generated a new Dell consulting and services programme.
The company is driving customers towards modernisation and future platforms through applications modernisation. "We have no substantial vested interest in managing a customer's past. We don't have too much legacy, unlike some of the traditional companies who don't want customers to shift from legacy and modernise applications as they will lose huge revenue," Vaswani says. As an example, he talks about the deal under which Dell helped migrate Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX)'s decade-old mainframe complex, including key applications such as clearing and settlement, third-party tools and utilities, and server and storage resources to a flexible open systems environment with minimum customer impact. Asia's second largest listed exchange was initially reluctant to embark on the migration from the legacy system but it did change its mind. The hardware and software refresh done by Dell has doubled SGX's speed of trading, led to significant lowering of annual operating costs and, as Vaswani says, future-proofed its technology.
Deployed in more than 50 countries, Dell mainframe re-hosting technology has lowered annual IT operating costs by 30 to 70 per cent for many organisations, while providing a path forward for mission-critical mainframe application and data investments, Vaswani says.
The focus on solutions and design principles is built around three mega-trends that are changing the technology industry: cloud, social media and mobility. Underpinning this is the growing challenge of big data, security, information and analytics. To shed its relative newcomer status in the solutions space, Dell has also been on an acquisition spree - over the last two years, it has acquired more than 10 companies.
That's quite a handful for any executive. So what else does he do apart from working 24x7? Vaswani pauses and says that's exactly what he has been doing over the last nine months since the initial days are always important for making the maximum impact. But he can now afford to ease up a bit and start playing golf. That's hardly a surprise, I tell him, as it's a common factor for all IIT & IIM graduates-cum-CEOs like him. A smiling Vaswani, however, tries hard to dispel that impression by saying he also loves playing the guitar.
And he wants to come to India more often now since his wife is in Bangalore and mother in Mumbai. Before the discussions wind up, Vaswani again goes back to his favourite topic and says joining Dell and working in the US is like "a voyage of discovery". He remembers with some relish what one of the IT icons in India (he doesn't mention the name) told him after he got the Dell assignment - "Suresh, you must create a big impact so that others want to follow you". Vaswani hopes his success would pave the way for many other senior people in the technology space to make an impact in global multinationals.
Others may follow, but quite a few of his former colleagues at Wipro have already made sure that his hopes are not misplaced. They have followed Vaswani to Dell in the last couple of years, though the man himself is at pains to downplay it by saying that the "limited" churn has got completely unwarranted attention.
It's like being reborn, Vaswani says. Apart from guiding the transformation of Dell, the new life has meant learning left-hand driving, shopping alone, cooking omelettes and, lately, fried rice, and spending time with a group of friends who are all non-Indians - things he had never done during his 25-year professional life in India. "It's like the main character in the film English Vinglish [where Sri Devi goes to the US as an under-confident Indian lady but adjusts swiftly to become more self-assured]. I am much less spoilt now and have become much more independent," Vaswani, who spent 25 years in Wipro before joining Dell in 2011, says. He orders bhajiya, an assortment of fried vegetables, something he misses in the US.
He has come straight from the airport after a long journey - first from Beijing to Hong Kong where he missed the plane to Mumbai and landed in Bangalore and then had to take a connecting flight to his original destination. Despite all this, he reached 15 minutes earlier than our scheduled meeting time and manages to look fresh and eager for his first meeting with a media person in India after more than eight months.
More From This Section
Before discussing Dell, I am eager to know the circumstances under which he had left Wipro as co-CEO in February 2011. Azim Premji had only talked about the "need for a simpler organisation structure after Wipro underperformed relative to competition". But Vaswani's response is cryptic: "That's history, can we please talk about the present?"
But I try once again: he must have been hurt by the sudden action on the part of Wipro? Vaswani picks a deep-fried chilly and bites hard, but refuses to utter the "W" word even once. All that he would say is that he is lucky to have "lived life twice" and whatever happens, happens for the best as he has got a fantastic opportunity to lead a global business. In any case, he says he is no longer dealing with just services around the (hardware) box, but in many other segments of the market. "You can't be a single-trick pony. The world is changing fast and it's no more only about outsourcing," he adds, ordering lemon tea.
What he likes particularly about Dell is that there is no command and control kind of management. "I have learnt to respect my reportees, because a buy-in is very important. The ultimate boss makes sure all of us are closely aligned to the overall strategy of the company; so there is more stress on engagement. It's not like in the army culture where the boss is the general and the reportees are colonels," Vaswani says. The "W" word still remains unsaid.
The other thing he loves about working in the US is nobody there cares about your age, unlike in India where you are "considered dead if you are above 50".
Vaswani is obviously keen to drive home the point that he is enjoying every bit of his life at Dell. That explains his remarks that he should have perhaps made the transition to a global company much earlier in life. Vaswani says he was at an inflection point in his career and had very interesting options, but what drew him to Dell was its transformation story and the idea of working directly under an inspirational chairman like Michael Dell. A big reason for his "enjoyment" is, of course, the opportunity to head Dell Services and entry into the global Executive Leadership team in December last year - much before he had expected. He had joined the company as chairman, Dell India and leader of the applications & BPO organisations, but the big opportunity came after his predecessor, Steve Schuckenbrock, stepped down suddenly after barely a year in the role to pursue his interest in health care.
He asks the steward for a second helping of the bhajiya (the first plate had disappeared in no time) and a fresh round of tea and gets down to explaining in detail the transformation that Dell is going through.
Dell, he says, has positioned itself as an end-to-end solutions provider that has evolved from a PC manufacturer into an information technology (IT) solutions partner to its customers. Previously a provider of next-to-the box or support services, the acquisition of Perot Systems in 2009 gave it the required push.
Though the need for transformation was prompted by the pressure on its mainline PC business, there is no denying that the US giant is taking its job seriously; its customer-focused attitude indeed led to the creation of the Social Media Command Center, a venture that not only anticipated the importance of social media before many companies had even considered Twitter campaigns but also generated a new Dell consulting and services programme.
The company is driving customers towards modernisation and future platforms through applications modernisation. "We have no substantial vested interest in managing a customer's past. We don't have too much legacy, unlike some of the traditional companies who don't want customers to shift from legacy and modernise applications as they will lose huge revenue," Vaswani says. As an example, he talks about the deal under which Dell helped migrate Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX)'s decade-old mainframe complex, including key applications such as clearing and settlement, third-party tools and utilities, and server and storage resources to a flexible open systems environment with minimum customer impact. Asia's second largest listed exchange was initially reluctant to embark on the migration from the legacy system but it did change its mind. The hardware and software refresh done by Dell has doubled SGX's speed of trading, led to significant lowering of annual operating costs and, as Vaswani says, future-proofed its technology.
Deployed in more than 50 countries, Dell mainframe re-hosting technology has lowered annual IT operating costs by 30 to 70 per cent for many organisations, while providing a path forward for mission-critical mainframe application and data investments, Vaswani says.
The focus on solutions and design principles is built around three mega-trends that are changing the technology industry: cloud, social media and mobility. Underpinning this is the growing challenge of big data, security, information and analytics. To shed its relative newcomer status in the solutions space, Dell has also been on an acquisition spree - over the last two years, it has acquired more than 10 companies.
That's quite a handful for any executive. So what else does he do apart from working 24x7? Vaswani pauses and says that's exactly what he has been doing over the last nine months since the initial days are always important for making the maximum impact. But he can now afford to ease up a bit and start playing golf. That's hardly a surprise, I tell him, as it's a common factor for all IIT & IIM graduates-cum-CEOs like him. A smiling Vaswani, however, tries hard to dispel that impression by saying he also loves playing the guitar.
And he wants to come to India more often now since his wife is in Bangalore and mother in Mumbai. Before the discussions wind up, Vaswani again goes back to his favourite topic and says joining Dell and working in the US is like "a voyage of discovery". He remembers with some relish what one of the IT icons in India (he doesn't mention the name) told him after he got the Dell assignment - "Suresh, you must create a big impact so that others want to follow you". Vaswani hopes his success would pave the way for many other senior people in the technology space to make an impact in global multinationals.
Others may follow, but quite a few of his former colleagues at Wipro have already made sure that his hopes are not misplaced. They have followed Vaswani to Dell in the last couple of years, though the man himself is at pains to downplay it by saying that the "limited" churn has got completely unwarranted attention.