SUNny days

It was the acquisition of Aventail that I was back in the Job Market – I managed to get 5 different job options each one being functionally unique. Sun was one of top options that gave an opportunity to experiment beyond sales and also the first to materialize. I joined on 14 Aug 2007.

Sudhir – my boss - has more critics than admirers though I felt he was a very nice boss, he made sure that I was comfortable in the new place. He is very mature, a good listener, very patient, genuinely interested in personality development (self and that of team members).

I was hired to manage the relationship with AFL. A partner who’s more than half the business came from Sun. My predecessor was eagerly waiting for me to join, he wanted to handover and move on with his new/other responsibilities. I trained with ‘Channel Enablers’ in Singapore for a channel development program before formally taking over ‘work’ from him in the beginning of the quarter. That quarter happened to be my partner’s best ever and we went on to beat that record twice again back to back. That left AFL with their best year ever. I was beaming with 199% achievement. Bunch of cash in the bank and the reward of lifetime happened – SUNRISE 2008 in Hawaii.

There was a bit of drama for the SUNRISE nomination, some old timers had been very desperate to make it to this event and obviously could not digest the fact that I made it to the event, that too undisputedly and with a helping of randomness (read luck).

The event was a mega event – the biggest I have ever attended. Shobana & I flew to US along with my friend Naresh and his wife. To begin with - Four of us travelled together to Chennai for the Visa, we stayed at Park Sheraton and enjoyed the best of Sun days. We meticulously planned our trip and choose a very intelligent route. Least expensive & covering all the places we wanted to visit.

Some time around Diwali in 08, we flew – Bangalore - Mumbai –New York. In Mumbai, after our dinner at Maratha Sheraton, we reached the airport. Here we spotted few Delta air-hostesses and compared to what we were used to in Jet and KF, these women looked like grannies, we joked that some of them will retire by the time we landed in US and alas it did really happen. We were about an hour away from NYC, when there was an announcement that one of the air-hostess just retired and that was her last official flight. Four of us could not stop laughing and this merriment continued thro’ out our trip though there were different stimuli every time. Hahahahaha.

At NYC- we stayed at Hyma’s cousin’s full furnished un-occupied apartment, we went around NYC - Times square, Empire state building, statue of Liberty and other places. We then flew to Hawaii via Salt Lake City. Hawaii was simply awesome; the Hilton hotel on the pristine beach waters was breathtaking. The arrangements were fabulous. All the SUNRISE winners were given Nokia E71, with local SIMs and that was the primary mode of communication. All program details would be SMSed and help was readily available to reach the respective venues. The trip was one of the best. Thank god and/for randomness that this lifetime trip happened.

Post the event – we flew to LA – my best friend of college days - Rajagopal- was there at the airport to welcome us. He threw his home open to us. His family was in India for vacations and he played the perfect host. Anchored at his place – we did LA tours (Universal studios, Hollywood, shopping). We drove down to Las-Vegas and this drive is something that I will never forget for all the pranks we played on each other and thrill of driving at very high speeds on the US freeways. Rajagopal – is a true gem - years have passed – but we still remember all those one-liners and fooling around with him. Along with all good things – we will also never forget the last minute scar that Rajagopal gave us. He lost his way back to the Airport and we barely managed to reach on time to check-in.
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Back to India – it was life and work as usual sans all the glory. The global recession had caught up with India, there was pressure on business. At around the same time – we all had fallen in love with ‘300’ – some bright spark thought that if we had 300 people we could do 300 million and thus we ended up hiring trespassers. . 300 reminds me of our kick-off in July 08 at ‘Leela Covlam’ in Trivandrum for which I was part of the organizing committee. This is where we heard – My way or the high way – recital, I believed this was a wee bit arrogant.

With business not being all that great, job market almost freezing, the picture was not very rosy. To make it worse the IBM acquisition rumors were doing rounds. Around the same time, the first RIFF (firing) happened which rendered 50 odd people jobless. About a month later the acquisition by Oracle was confirmed. Amidst of all this – a re-org was done, maybe for easy integration. There was a change in the leadership. A lot of man hours were wasted in speculating about acquisition, RIFF, Packages, Jobs, Re-org, etc etc.

Buta –Gorilla was a big bully, typical of what you could find. A miser at core, always compared himself with his peers and ended up being jealous. I very boldly handled every attempt of his to bully me, be it to learn technology or holding my claims & payments or going on leave. He finally gave up; he was actually a very timid fellow but would try aggressive posturing to hide that weakness. There were many people helping me on the sly to overcome this fellow like the talented jolly Marwari.

The CIC (Change In Control) was announced in Jan’ 10, a good 8 months after the acquisition thanks to delays in EU approval. Post CIC - LEC (Legal Entity Combination) began in major markets. During this period we had a couple of RIFFs and a major exodus. I was lucky to be aligned with the A&C team of Oracle and I formally started as the KPD (Key Partner Director) in June 10.

I was asked to report to a person whom I did not regard as very senior or mature enough. He had experience handling rookies and the hapless fellow could not adopt. I put him in his place and the key people acknowledged their oversight. I ignored him for the rest of my stint with Oracle. Work wise I settled in very quickly making my mark with the partners and internally. I managed TechM and MSat, both of these partners were on credit hold and one of my significant achievements at Oracle, was to get them out of the hold. I interacted with the top management with ease and helped interlocking. Business was beginning to trickle in and the pipeline was building rather impressively when I decided to call it quits.

AFL the partner that I managed was over-dependent on Sun, as a result the folks there were very malleable. They were our second largest partner and a very simple and straightforward organization compared to our largest partner – Wipro. This made my role somewhat strategic only as the tactical part did not require my expertise or intervention. The many big mouths in Sun and there were plenty of them, would keep bitching about PASO, for this role had all the glamour of a typical sales role sans all the sales pressure. Within PASO – managing AFL was a least pressure role.

Sun in general took pride in calling itself a company of 35000 entrepreneurs loosely connected by email. This was largely true and had earned compliments for being a flexible place which gives you the freedom to think and do things differently, some called this style – Cowboyish – maybe they were right. Oracle on the other extreme is a process driven, rules bound, profit making machine. I had the good fortune to work with both even though the LEC in India had not happened till I quit.

Some of the folks in Sun, were exceptional in caliber, their rich vocabulary, their style, the way they dressed was all very superior. They were definitely a cut above the most, this also probably made most of the folks very snobbish and arrogant. The not so blessed people were also infected by these virtues. Many a la “Maya Sarabhais”(from the famed Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai TV Series)
For a brief period I had two people part of my team for managing the AFL business in west and south. Both of them were very talented and I shared a great rapport with them. Their misfortune was their timing in Sun, they did not last long in their roles. Vineet went on to become a very mature and learned person and I always enjoyed interacting with him.
Working from home was a privilege that I enjoyed whenever possible. I was friendly with the travel desk and boss’s itineraries were always in the know to plan working from home.

Retro look: Small fish in large pond. Easy going 3.5 years. Success is not a function of your talent, it is all about packaging and politics and of course perception management. It would be fun to be a big fish in the large pond.