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Kalyanaraman Krishnan

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Kalyanaraman Krishnan

Enterprise Mobile Architect

Varian Medical Systems

Kalyanaraman Krishnan is a member of:

Company and job profile

Kalyan Krishnan is an Enterprise Mobile Architect with an MS from VIT (India) and MBA (University of Wisconsin System). He holds a patent in Groupware Integration and won an award for being among the first to integrate a smartphone with SAP. Currently he works for Varian Medical Systems that manufactures medical devices and software to combat cancer. He has also published a free Indian Rail iPhone app that has high ratings and several downloads as a way of giving back to his motherland, India.

Challenges faced in job

What I have found challenging about the job is that in recent times with economic challenges, all businesses are looking to cut costs and people are looked at as "resources" to extract maximum "efficiency" as opposed to human being with feelings, emotions, hopes and desires. This has helped me increase the humanity in me and to help me realize the value of helping people realize their potential as a way of furthering my own potential.

My important career decision

Sitting in the comfort zone of a cubicle in a reputed software multi-national, I made a career decisions to go outside my comfort zone and better understand the marketplace and customers and how business is done. This has led me through various challenges and hardships but has also left me with valuable real world experience that has taught me to value life, family, customers and created a broader perspective.

Managing professional as well as personal life

There were times I was travelling as part of my job and one year I travelled 100,000 miles and spend 200 nights in hotels. It helped me re-evaluate and value a work-life balance and understand the sacrifice family makes to help us be successful. To that point I now ensure I do not travel, I do not take work home, I do not even take the work laptop home and separate my work life from personal life. Evenings and weekends are spend with my family and is not to be disturbed. Often when we set schedules like this you may be amazed that what seems business critical can wait till morning after all.

Goals and Ambitions

My goals over the next 5 years is to evolve myself to become a person who helps people succeed. For over 12 years now as an Architect I have worked on various technologies and processes. Now I want to start looking at people and organization cultures as a change agent. Since mobility is a lifestyle change as much as a technical change, these ambitions go hand in hand.

Making job easier

Relationships are the most important to make your job easier at work. Your relationship with your customers, supervisor and peers can determine how pleasurable or how difficult your work life can be.

Being different

Being a specializing generalist and understanding business and how businessmen think segregates myself from others. Most engineers are specialists and good at one or two things. However today you are expected to be a jack of all trades. Combining this to be the jack of all trades and master of one or two is the way out. Further the way that business and management think is very different from the way technical people think. Thus it is important to increase understanding of business and how business folks view you.

Current Trends

Mobility, Social media, cloud computing and in-memory computing will the trends in the near future. More and more people are going to use hand held devices, people want to connect and relate as never before, IT organizations are moving away from large install bases to cloud based solutions and in-memory computing is coming up for performance optimization of big data.

My role model

My role model and indeed of most will be our parents. Their ability to carry life forward and maintain family with limited resources but shielding family from external pressures is something we can all incorporate in our lives.

My strongest Skill

Ability to learn new things, being creative and innovative, being well read and aware of what is going on in our field, understanding business and a strong sense of ethics driven by personal values.

My advice

Do's

1. Work on what you find interesting rather than what is hot
2. Be well read about trends in your area
3. Think about how much value you can add to business rather than how much salary you are getting.
4. Make friends and have as much fun as possible
5. Have a backup plan or backup skill

Dont's

1. Do not become arrogant because the job market is good and do not lose self esteem when job market is down
2. Do not believe you are irreplaceable
3. Do not forget your ethics and moral values

Family Background

My grandparents were both entrepreneurs. One was a banker and the other started an accounting firm. They relied on themselves and hard work to become what they wanted to be. My maternal grandfather was a freedom fighter who associated with Sri Rajagopalachari's Swatantra movement. My father carried on the accounting firm launched by his father and taught the values of humility, living well within means and spending time with family (he used to drop and pick me up from school every day). My mother is a home maker who carries on the fiercely independent spirit of her freedom fighter father and inculcated strong ethics, values and love for the country.

Views about 'Tech product Introduction is weak among Indians'

To create a successful product we need to value innovation and creativity. Our education system values memorizing rather than creative reasoning. Further when youngsters come up with an idea, there are too many people and bureaucracy and red tape to pull them down. Finally even if they do come out with a product, customers need to encourage them and pay money and buy early versions of the products and not ask for freebies. One good thing is that this bureaucracy and red tape is not inherently Indian but a legacy of the British Raj that we need to shed immediately.

Books recommended

All people can benefit from reading our traditional spiritual books to help discover purpose and meaning in life. Starting with Amar Chitra Katha, Ramayana and Mahabharatha as a child to Thirukkural to Wings of fire, if we can focus on books to get our life path straight, all else will fall in line.

My achievement

My most valuable achievement is creating the first free Indian Rail iPhone app downloaded by millions of users. Getting emails from people I never knew from all corners of the world about how my work has helped create a difference in their lives adds far greater meaning and satisfaction than anything else in my professional life. I am including sample emails I received:

"You have taken out a lot of burden from millions of travellers. A great job without expecting any monitory benefits. May God Almighty allow you more and more opportunities in the future too."

"Excellent application. Good work done. As a railway man I appreciate the application"

Please remember your motherland and if each one of us used a little bit of our talent to give back to our country, we can have a homeland that can be heaven.