Singapore’s Thakral One appoints ICT industry pioneer to head Sri Lankan operations

Tuesday, 3 June 2014 01:26 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Thakral One Ltd., Singapore recently announced the appointment of Channa de Silva, a pioneer and a well-known personality in the ICT industry to head their operations in Sri Lanka and Maldives. De Silva is a renowned veteran in the ICT industry in Sri Lanka with over 20 years of experience in both multinational and Sri Lankan organisations and officially took the reins as Thakral One’s new Senior Vice President of Sri Lanka and Maldives. He will be responsible for driving the ICT solutions, consulting and services business for Thakral One in Sri Lanka and Maldives. He will directly report to the Thakral One Group CEO based in Singapore. He will be responsible for the operation and expansion of Thakral One’s ICT solution offerings in core banking, business analytics, ICT security, ICT infrastructure including data centres to corporates in the banking and finance, telecommunication, government and manufacturing verticals. In

addition, he will also manage the services aspect of the business to offer reliable long-term managed support to clients in the markets under his purview. Headquartered in Singapore, Thakral One specialises in providing fit-for-purpose services and solutions that are well adapted to the needs and realities of the markets they operate in. Backed by the multi-billion dollar Thakral Group, Thakral One has presence in over 13 countries in the region and brings a potent combination of domain expertise and best-in-class solutions to every client, by drawing on their pan-Asian presence, a specialised pool of skill-sets and long-term strategic partnerships with world leaders such as Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, HP, Juniper, Lenovo, HID, CA, Checkpoint, Fortinet, VMware and Temenos. De Silva joined Thakral One from IBM Sri Lanka, where he served as the Deputy General Manager – Software Group. He was instrumental in introducing IBM’s software universe to Sri Lanka and developing its software business and partner ecosystem. Prior to IBM, he served as the Director for Enterprise Business and Public Sector at Microsoft Sri Lanka where he led the company through an exponential growth during his tenure in both positions. His efforts and achievements were recognised numerous times by Microsoft where he was awarded with the Microsoft Gold Club excellence award in 2011 for exceptional performance, the Microsoft Share Fighter Champion in 2012 for winning against competition and recognised as the Best Enterprise Team in South Asia for three years in a row. Earlier in his career, he has held CEO positions in many local IT companies including Lanka Internet, the pioneering Internet Services Provider in Sri Lanka. He is also the first ever web master in Sri Lanka by creating the first commercial web site http://www.lanka.net/ (1994) and the engineer responsible for establishing the first ever dedicated Internet connection in Sri Lanka way back in 1995. He holds his B.Sc (Honours) and M.Sc degrees in Electrical and Computer engineering from the State University of New York, USA with a specialisation in Data Communications. He obtained his MBA from the PIM affiliated to University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka and holds memberships at the IEEE (USA), Tau Beta Pai (USA), Eta Kappa Nu (USA) and Golden Key (USA) for academic excellence. He is also a sought after trainer, a key note speaker and a lecturer at PIM for the prestigious MBA program, Colombo University, SLIIT and Open University Sri Lanka.