After working for several companies and in varying roles lasting for about four decades, a single trigger caused me to rethink life and repurpose my career. On Xmas Eve 2020, my daughter and her husband shared that they were expecting a baby. When we had newborns in the 90s, our parents traveled from India to help us. Similarly, we wanted to be there for our kids to help them navigate parenthood, especially in the early stages of a baby’s life.

After hearing this exciting news, we reached out to a financial advisor who reviewed our retirement portfolio and spending patterns. The financial advisor informed us that we could comfortably give up my full-time job and focus on family. With that, we decided that I would leave my full-time job. The goal was to start with plenty of time to be with family and eventually decide what to do with my career.

Leaving a job with a good note (do not let the door hit you on your way out) is just as important as when you join (new brooms sweep well). When IDC found a potential new hire, Al Gillen (my manager at IDC) reached out and requested that I time my departure with the arrival of a new hire. It worked very well as there was a period of overlap when I trained my replacement and departed IDC at the end of June 2021.

My blog in 2014 describing my journey to becoming a full-time analyst at IDC included several observations on the progress of cloud from 2009 to 2014. I will recollect them (with commentary) below:

1.      Major vendors have made OpenStack and CloudFoundry viable cloud standards.
While OpenStack has held its own (although not as high growth as expected) primarily in the telecom industry, CloudFoundry folded the original architecture when Kubernetes took over as the underlying platform while CloudFoundry now supports Kubernetes.

2.      Companies like Adobe and Microsoft revamped software delivery from a one-time purchase to a subscription model.
Microsoft and Adobe thrived with the subscription model. Outside the realm of software, several retailers have also followed the model popularized by Costco with warehouse memberships (and first adopted by Amazon with Prime). Walmart and Kroger with respective Walmart+ and Boost memberships are retail examples. Popular home automation solutions like Ring, Nest, and Eero have subscription models.

3.      Integrated technology stacks targeting data centers are being developed and promoted by Cisco, HP, IBM, and Oracle.
Traditional vendors continue to promote integrated stacks. A surprising (and very successful) addition was Nutanix, that while not yet profitable, is showing continuous growth. Simultaneously, public cloud leaders like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft now provide on-premise offerings with a common control plane.

4.      APIs emerged as the primary way cloud services are delivered and consumed.
While API integration seemed new in 2014, API standards have been continuously improved and currently is the best practice of cloud integration.

5.      Amazon Web Services won the CIA contract over competitors with a higher price and shook up the status quo of large IT implementations dominated by a few (and large) vendors.
AWS leadership in government has constantly grown with this experience (beyond the US government entities) as government agencies prefer to have alternative suppliers, new contracts have included multiple vendors.

6.      Explosive mobile growth opened new approaches to manage end-to-end application and device management.
This acceleration continues with the evolution of network technology to bring in 5G capabilities.

7.      Internet of Things continues to grow as cloud services support billions of devices.
Next-generation digital transformation includes automation at the edge that combines 5G capabilities with artificial intelligence/machine learning capabilities.

8.      Data is growing, and big data enabled by cloud storage is becoming the enabler of data analytics.
Storage technologies continue to be optimized by sharding techniques while developers have a wide choice of database types to match application needs.

9.      Non-IT vendors are leveraging their domain knowledge to become cloud service providers (a great example is GE Software).
GE Software (aka Predix) was a spectacular failure but perhaps became an example to other enterprises to avoid leaping in with both feet without adequate experience. We now see several financial enterprises like Goldman Sachs heavily offer software capabilities.

10.  Infrastructure solutions are commoditized while platforms are becoming the differentiating factor of cloud providers.
Basic infrastructure is commoditized, but there are benefits of purpose-built chips that focus on individual capabilities, like AI and security. The path in showing benefits up the stack continues to be a differentiating factor.

July to November of 2021 was a pre-sabbatical period where I juggled reviewing options of restarting my career as an independent analyst while dedicating my time to family. My granddaughter was born on August 11, 2021. That experience has been exhilarating and fully warranted the career steps taken.

Moving forward, I plan to focus on three areas:

Edge computing: Combining 5G, AI/ML-powered by special purpose chips and security, this type of implementation promises the future of innovation where automation of physical processes is key to success. This area is exciting for me since it is very cutting edge with growth yet to come.

Cloud-Native architecture: Containers, microservices, and serverless are popular among enterprises. End users and vendors both need advisory services to communicate the benefits of the cloud-native architecture.

Low/No Code: While not new, the demand for new applications makes this approach very popular that abstracts the entire backend and allows implementation of new applications much faster than traditional software development platforms. My goal is to help vendors position products better and end-users develop a strategy to include low/no-code as an essential development tool.

So, where am I now? About 16 vendors have me on their independent analyst list, including AT&T, AWS, Cisco, Dell, Google, HPE, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nutanix, Nvidia, Oracle, Red Hat, Salesforce, SAP, VMWare, and Workday.

From now on, my goal is to allocate my time as follows:

1.      Spread the word about the business benefits of modern technology architectures (Hire me and I will show you how!)

2.      Focus on charitable causes – give back monetarily or with free career advice

3.      Learn new hobbies – Drums?

4.      Reinforce old friendships – please reach out to reconnect

5.      Focus on self (food, exercise, etc.)

With this, I am looking forward to the next phase of my career!