We’re very excited to welcome Mitesh Patel to the SADA Systems family. Mitesh recently joined SADA as Vice President of Consulting Services. He joins SADA after serving many years in leadership and management roles at Neudesic, a Microsoft partner. Mitesh spoke to us about his plans on the job and industry trends.
SADA Systems: What do you hope to achieve in your first six months on the job?
Patel: Primarily, I hope to help SADA grow, and to introduce standards across all of our practices. I’m interested in putting in place a solid delivery model, which includes expanding our services in strategic enterprise areas such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Azure and Sharepoint. Having said all that, a recent mentor instilled the concept of “aim small, miss small.” I want to focus on making small incremental changes so it doesn’t feel like someone is coming in and pulling the rug out from underneath everybody. Ultimately, I’m responsible for delivering on revenue commitments for our pipeline.
SADA Systems: What do you see as the top customer challenges that you and your team will be striving to address?
Patel: Every organization has modernization challenges. It’s hard for most large companies to keep up with the pace of technological change. There is a continual challenge to upgrade legacy, line of business systems. And with that, there is the need to fill the talent gap. So we will be working to help companies modernize platforms and move to the cloud. When I meet with CIOs, I challenge them to not spend any more money on physical data centers. They should be shifting their focus to the cloud, where you pay for what you use, compared with buying half a million dollars of data center space because you might need that capability in a few years. That is a waste. Enterprises also don’t have the ability to modernize their infrastructure very quickly. Every couple of years something very new is coming out and pretty soon you are a few generations old with your technology. This is where the value of consultants comes to play as we are positioned to be on the leading edge of technology, and we can bring that level of thought leadership to help companies achieve their goals faster.
SADA Systems: How has Microsoft Azure evolved to meet enterprise cloud needs?
Patel: The cloud is an expansive term. If you look at a chart showing all of the services and features in Microsoft Azure, it’s mind-boggling. Yet, Microsoft has always focused on providing the nails and lumber, not the house. Now, though, Azure is maturing and moving to a consumption-based model where you can get up and running with minimal configuration. For example, with Microsoft Power BI, you get analytics as a service. You import your data, sign in and start using the product. You don’t have to build anything. A company can even get advanced capabilities such as Machine Learning in the cloud. I will also say that Microsoft these days is doing a far better job at selling solutions and selling to the business.
SADA Systems: What are you most looking forward to about your new life in Los Angeles?
Patel: I was born in England, and moved to Central Florida when I was eight years old. I came to this country speaking the Queen’s English, but it didn’t take too long for me to lose that, living in the South. I ended up moving to Pennsylvania after college and I really liked the rolling hills and seasons because it reminded me of England. I have lived there for more than 20 years, but now, I am very excited about being in the West. I will never have to shovel snow again. In fact, once I committed to this role, I sold my snow blower and generator. Now we can go to the mountains and see snow if we want to, but we can also go to the beach. We will have a lot of options! Being closer to my parents and extended family in Southern California is also a big deal.
