- Madu Ratnayake on being named one of the world’s top 100 tech leaders
In the words of the Lord of the Rings’ Galadriel: “The world is changed.” While we might not feel it in the water and in the earth (yet), with the advent of remote work, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), smart machines, and countless other tech and IT innovations, we are currently on the brink of our Fourth Industrial Revolution, with the First Industrial Revolution being the steam engine, the second being driven by electric power, and the third known as the digital revolution.
The leaders of our tech and IT spaces are forging a new world, and recently, Virtusa Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) Madu Ratnayake was named one of the world’s Top 100 Leaders 2021 by the popular and influential technologymagazine.com, joining tech and IT juggernauts like Amazon CTO and VP Werner Vogels, Zoom Global Group CIO Harry Moseley, Volkswagen Group CIO Beater Hofer, Microsoft Group CIO and Executive VP – Technology and Research Kevin Scott, and Google CIO Ben Fried.
To mark this milestone, Brunch chatted with Ratnayake on just what such an accolade means and picked his brain on how the tech and IT industry has evolved, and where he thinks it’s heading.
An ode to teamwork
Speaking on being named one of the world’s Top 100 Leaders, Ratnayake said that he and his team are delighted at this recognition, stressing that being part of this kind of leadership list is all about teamwork, both within and outside the company. Looking to the future – and for Ratnayake, the tech and IT space is all about the future – he shared that his main focus will continue to be getting ahead and staying ahead of the curve and setting the foundation for his teams to always be well-prepared in an incredibly dynamic and rapidly-changing environment.
“The tech space is on an exponential curve,” Ratnayake said. “And we are only at that point where the curve turns sharply upwards. The rate of change will be dramatically more in the coming years than it has been previously. Things that we considered science fiction in the past, like drones and self-driving cars, are becoming reality today. The real power will be being able to put these different technologies together to create new innovations, and that is part of what makes being in tech at this movement so exciting. There is tremendous opportunity for any country getting involved in tech to ride this exponential wave.”
Taking us behind the curtain for a moment, Ratnayake explained just how he approaches being CIO of a multinational company like Virtusa, sharing that he approaches the job through three broad areas: Running the business effectively and increasing its efficiency with technology; securing the business from cyberthreats and making it more resilient to adversity through measures like, for example, moving information and processes to the cloud for scalable secure access; and focusing on transforming the business, using tech to make it future-ready and better able to stay ahead of its competitors and anticipate and meets its customers’ needs, and finding ways to monetise the business digitally, whether through data or using new technologies like AI and blockchain to redefine how the business works.
The evolution of Sri Lanka’s tech and IT industry
With over 25 years of experience in the field, Ratnayake is in the unique position of having seen Sri Lanka’s tech space grow from a fledgling industry to the behemoth that we think it is today, even though the industry is still exponentially evolving.
Looking back, Ratnayake shared that some of the key megatrends that have shaped the tech and IT industry to make it virtually unrecognisable from when he first started include quantum computing, which infinitely increased what computers could do; and cloud computing, which served as a force multiplier in businesses and mobile and network technology that easily connect organisations and consumers. The cost of starting an internet business has dramatically dropped with cloud computing, the coming of age of AI, and mobile technology, which has put computers into almost everyone’s hands globally.
“These megatrends have shifted a lot of what tech can do for society and business,” Ratnayake said, adding that the fact that these megatrends are also still evolving and improving makes it very difficult to predict the future, and is precisely why the global, and local tech space operates on an exponential curve. “Just last month we saw private citizens go into space, something we wouldn’t have even thought about five years ago. It’s very hard to predict anything because the rate of change is so high. Anyone who plans beyond a year or two is planning to fail because the content and environment changes so rapidly. The only constant is change, as they say, and in that sense, I feel like you can’t predict beyond a short horizon because of the rapid rate of change.”
Tech, IT, and the new normal
Speaking of force multipliers, Ratnayake examined the effects of the pandemic on the tech and IT field, saying that the key effect of the pandemic, both globally and locally, is that it has dramatically accelerated digital adoption and transformation, quipping that a popular joke in the tech field is wondering just who has driven a company’s digital transformation most – its CEO, CIO, or Covid.
The pandemic took companies digital virtually overnight, and locally, many companies struggled to adapt digitally through the first wave before finding their feet and being able to power through subsequent waves. The biggest paradigm shift the pandemic brought was remote work.
While not a new concept in the tech space, remote working certainly broke the mould for many other industries, and with the workforce now seeing that the majority of jobs can be done from anywhere, the new normal and the post-pandemic environment is going to see the disappearance of geographical boundaries in the working world. “The second phase of remote work is being able to get work done from anywhere in the world,” Ratnayake said. “Remote work will drive truly global work. This was already happening slowly before in terms of gig work, but we will see a dramatic change ahead, and corporations will also need to change the way they lead, especially in tech. Geographical boundaries have now ceased, and we will now see individuals becoming agents, or ‘solopreneurs’. If you have any skill or talent, you will be able to sell it on the global marketplace. We can see the younger generations doing this already, whether it’s through a YouTube channel, coding, ethical hacking, or other freelance work. Companies are also shifting the way they operate, opting to have a bigger mix of gig workers with permanent staff. These changes were already happening, but the pandemic has accelerated it because the whole world realised it at the same time and it has become easier to embrace.”
For Sri Lanka to be able to thrive in this new normal, Ratnayake shared that the biggest thing we need to do is build talent, especially in tech and IT, noting that the industry is supply-constrained – there is demand, but not enough talent supply to meet it. We need to build talent who can do the work and build the next generation of entrepreneurs and solopreneurs who will be able to solve problems at a world scale and become global corporations.
Adding that, in the future, what will set people apart will be their ability to imagine and work towards solving problems, Ratnayake stressed that it is vital for the younger generation to develop the mindset of solving problems at a larger scale.
Outside of Virtusa, Ratnayake also serves as a senior board member of Sarvodaya Fusion, a grassroots organisation that focuses on empowering rural communities through technology by providing them with access to technology and advocating for technological literacy so that communities can use tech to improve their daily lives, like farmers being able to use their phones to check market prices and secure microloans, to rural youths being aware of the different skills they can offer to the global market and how to monetise these skills.
The rise of the real digital native
Looking to the future on a personal level, Ratnayake reflected that he was most excited about the new generation of entrepreneurs and solopreneurs coming into the market and seeing the role that they will play on the world stage.
“We’re already seeing people like Yohani paving the way,” Ratnayake said. “And we will see more of that. There’ll be lots of other creativity. I think that’s the future, seeing how these young digital natives learn and work, talking to anyone from anywhere in the world, becoming global citizens using tech, taking advantage of everything out there, and contributing at a global scale.”
