Independence attracted me to IT

7-July-2009

Ashan Kumar met Balathasan Sayanthan, Solutions Architect hSenid Mobile Solutions to understand how IT changed his life...

Having been born in Jaffna and brought up in the hill capital, Sayanthan is definitely a humble individual with an ambition and force to be a respected person in this industry one day. “My family and my alma mater are my greatest sources of energy, he said. As a child my dreams and ambitions were circumspect, I wished I travelled the world like Ian Wright, the host of the Discovery Channel program Lonely Planet I forever used to dream about travelling around the globe. I didnt dream of having anything to do with computers as I wasnt aware of the opportunities available in the IT sector and the ICT domain. Secondly I thought that others around me were much better than me, when it comes to handling machines and gadgets, he said. He explained why he selected Information Technology as his future, After I completed my advanced level exams I experimented with web development and was enthralled by my work and what I could do through coding.

This excitement was the biggest influencing factor in selecting IT as my career path. I was fascinated, learning about the modest beginnings of the present big players like Yahoo and Google and was convinced this is a field we do not have to be dependant on having any ancestral inheritance and its more of a level playing field even with the developed world. IT taught me success will depend on what we do in present and not the past.Straight out of university I joined hSenid Mobile Solutions as an Associate Software Engineer. On paper I had a degree specializing in Computer Science from the Faculty of Science, University of Peradeniya and was a CIMA passed finalist. I was eager to apply my theoretical knowledge in the corporate world, he said.

hSenid provided me with the knowledge I needed to put to use what I learnt into practice. I was pushed out of my comfort zone and was given challenges on a continuing basis. Currently I lead the Business Solutions Division. As a team we are primarily responsible for understanding the business requirements of our customers and proposing technical solutions. At the same time I made my way into being a MySQL expert at hSenid and currently a certified MySQL Cluster DBA and an authorized MySQL instructor. This gave me an interesting opportunity to conduct training on MySQL on a regular basis. This provided me with an opportunity to train students from more than 10 countries and of different ages. This taught me how much knowledge is valued and respected. As part of my job I had got an opportunity to realize a childhood dream of mine, which is to travel the world. Looking into my passport the other day I realized I had travelled abroad 15 times during the last 18 months and been to five different countries already and have scheduled business engagements in two more countries during the next month my experience at hSenid has provided me the opportunity to perform to a vast tier of technological experts, increasing my capabilities,he said.

When I asked him about his advice for the future of the country he answered, If you are irresistibly attracted by the things that can be done by computers, and have a thirst to learn and to take on challenges then this is the industry for you. IT is an industry with a global potential which is large enough to take in people with varied skills to play different roles and also has enough opportunities for individuals to carve out a niche for themselves. As our CTO said at a recent presentation for a group of university students “You do not have to be already the Best in the batch, class or group, all you need to be is good enough and be committed to learn and practise it for a considerable amount of time to become the best ultimately!.