As vice-president of AGC Networks’ managed services business unit, Sreeharsha Subbanna is responsible for managing and incubating AGC’s global managed services practice. “From a strategic viewpoint, we are revamping our service delivery to see how best we can deliver managed services to clients. We are working towards a strong value proposition for managed services that can be taken to our target segments,” he comments.
According to Subbanna, the biggest challenge facing managed service providers is the emergence of multiple definitions of the concept. “Some players have come up with arbitrary definitions of what managed services are. This leads to confusion in the minds of prospective clients, who are unaware of what these services actually comprise. As a result, clients have different expectations from the company approaching them,” he says.
According to Subbanna, managed services are all about day-to-day management of information and technology, either in the form of smart sourcing or outsourcing that customers want or strategic and hybrid sourcing. “When my team approaches prospective clients, they stress on the benefits that managed services can bring to existing IT service frameworks in terms of cost savings, enhanced productivity and improved growth.”
An engineering graduate from Kuvempu University, Subbanna also has a postgraduate diploma in management from IIM Bangalore. Talking about his early ambitions, Subbanna says, “At that time, if one was good at academics, one was likely to choose engineering. By that logic, I did pursue engineering; however, I became a management professional by design. I was just 10 days away from going to the US for a master’s in engineering when I changed my mind and went to IIM Bangalore instead.”
In a career spanning more than 16 years, Subbanna has held key leadership positions in various organisations in the IT and services sector. He has been associated with organisations like Wipro, 3D Networks, GTL Limited and Parsec Technologies.
As a leader, he is a firm believer in collaborative institutional growth. He evaluates how best the strengths of all the individuals in his team can be collaborated to respond to market needs.
Besides work, Subbanna’s other passions are reading and contributing to industry journals. He enjoys reading books on management, philosophy and history. Subbanna regularly contributes articles on managed services, on how best to optimise existing IT frameworks to increase productivity and other related subjects, to the IIMs and managed services institutes.