Awita Badonia has 25 years of industry experience, having worked with organisations like Tech Mahindra, Network Programs India, Alcatel Modi Network Systems and National Information Techologies Limited. As IT Director, CSM Alcatel-Lucent South Asia, she is responsible for end-to-end service delivery, including end-user computing, networks, data centre operations, vendor relationships, IT governance, transformation and capacity and cost projections.
Badonia is keen on making IT a business enabler in the company, rather than merely a support function. One of her key challenges is ensuring customer satisfaction while working on a limited budget. She is responsible for ensuring the success of the company?s network and data centre transformation with the aim of achieving operational efficiency, quick services on demand, and cost optimisation. The company is also pursuing virtualisation, moving from physical file servers co-located at many sites in the country to a data centre in Singapore. The key challenges associated with network and data transformation is to maintain business continuity during migration.
Badonia sees the adoption of cloud-based services as the biggest emerging technology trend. Going forward, products and services will be delivered through enterprise as a service, an advanced cloud computing model that offers cost efficiency to small businesses because of the same resources being shared by multiple businesses, irrespective of location or the devices they use. She also believes that IoT will soon become a reality, comprising billions of devices that can sense, communicate, compute and potentially actuate. Data streams from these devices will challenge traditional ways of data management and contribute to the emerging paradigm of big data.
Badonia identifies her most challenging role as the profit and loss head of the switching and embedded division of a telco. ?I was entrusted with this responsibility when the revenue of the division had been reduced to zero. The turnaround was achieved by putting in place a new product-cum-services strategy and managing the existing talent. Two new products based on VoIP and IP QoS were conceptualised, developed, implemented and commercialised. The business became profitable within two years. This assignment provided me with valuable experience,? she says.
Badonia unwinds by spending time with her two daughters and husband. ?I?ve travelled widely and love to travel for business and leisure.?
