TAPMI played host to Mr Saravanan Velrajan, Director – Technology, Aricent on 13 July 2016. While Mr Saravanan’s guest lecture spanned a wide variety of topics, his focus lay on the theme of the session ‘Technologies that Impact Tomorrow’s Managers’. In his career spanning over 17 years, he has worked with networking giants like Cisco, Ericsson and Juniper holding various leadership positions. In addition to which he is also an active member of the prominent Toastmasters’ Club. Firstly, he touched upon the impact of social media on managers and the need to leverage the same in improving business. He also spoke about how social media served as an important tool in background verification during recruitment. He also spoke about how Nestle as a firm had to utilise this platform to come out of the controversy surrounding the firm and enhance its brand. He then moved on to talk about the importance of mobile applications and highlighted an example of Verizon, where the entire workflow was automated using the same.aricent

Mr Saravanan also spoke about ‘Smart Homes’ where smartphones were used to control various devices in the home. Moving on, he went on to discuss the impact of the cloud in today’s technology world. Citing examples like Dropbox and Microsoft Office 365, he stressed on how organizations could now save a lot of costs by using cloud computing as a means for the same. In his interaction, he went on to compare Nokia and Apple.
While the former followed a close-ended approach to their business, Apple was relatively less stringent wherein the platform offered could be used by anyone for developing applications.

Mr Saravanan also spoke about the ‘Internet of Things’ which is a network of ‘things’ embedded with software, sensors and connectivity to enable data exchange. Walmart was cited as an example to highlight the automation of the entire supply chain. In addition he stressed on Big Data and the growing relevance of analytics in today’s world. Finally he recounted his experiences at the Toastmasters Club calling it the ‘safest place on the Earth to fail’. His final message resounded in the students’ ears long after the lecture, he said ‘Change Small, Change Often’.