Pinnacle Award Finalist Vinay Manne: ‘The More We Listen To and Learn From Our Customers, the More Effective We Will Be’

The finalists for WashingtonExec’s Pinnacle Awards were announced Oct. 13, and we’ll be highlighting some of them until the event takes place virtually Dec. 8.

Next is Cloud Industry Executive of the Year (Private Company) finalist Vinay Manne, who’s chief technology officer at Dovel Technologies. Here, he talks key achievements, learning from failures, proud career moments and more.

What key achievements did you have in 2020/2021?

Migrating applications and assets to the cloud and leveraging DevOps technologies presents agencies with tremendous opportunities to drive cost savings, realize efficiencies and transform how they operate. But for many of our customers, getting there is complicated. For example, moving legacy apps to the cloud, a lack of skilled staff to manage the transition and managing hybrid environments adds complexity and uncertainty.

To help our federal customers simplify their cloud journey, I recently led Dovel’s strategy to become a full lifecycle managed cloud service provider.

During this period, Dovel’s talent pool was strengthened to include capable solution architects, engineers, and managers and expanded its cloud practice to become a key aspect of the solutions provided for federal customers.

Today, Dovel offers a unique combination of turnkey solutions, platforms, cloud adoption frameworks and industry best practices that help our customers in public safety, health care, and grants management accelerate and mature their cloud and DevOps programs.

Uniquely, we focus on full-lifecycle management services. This has enabled us to expand our customer offerings, win more contracts and partner with the government to drive cloud adoption and infrastructure modernization.

What has made you successful in your current role?

Leveraging emerging technologies and architecture to solve problems, implement cloud adoption and modernize IT is one thing — but collaboration is the glue that makes innovation happen, particularly in this time of remote work.

As a leader, it’s my role to ensure everyone on the team has what they need from a solution or talent perspective to move away from siloed approaches and ensure the best outcomes for our customers. The cornerstone of this is communication.

Sitting together to work through problems, engaging SMEs to provide guidance and catalyzing innovation through ongoing conversation — propagating this culture of collaboration and cooperation is a crucial part of my role.

I also lean heavily on my technical and engineering background to guide decisions about building solutions in a reusable manner. What we do for one customer need not be restricted to that customer. Many of the solutions that we architect and implement can be cross-pollinated for other customer engagements.

Rather than start from scratch each time, it’s an approach that helps my team and Dovel reduce the cost and speed the impact of digital innovation for each customer.

What was a turning point or inflection point in your career?

The emergence of cloud computing was a transformative moment in my career. My early focus was on the software engineering/systems integration side of the house, but with the advent of cloud, I was given the opportunity to focus on incubating these emerging technologies. From there, I moved up the career ladder quickly, progressing from program manager to director of operations to CTO in less than a decade.

I was also fortunate to be involved in several areas of the business. My career has afforded me the opportunity to collaborate with a multitude of customers, business units and teams. That exposure has been pivotal in helping me expand my capabilities and add value to my team, Dovel and our customers.

What’s one key thing you learned from a failure you had?

Our customers seek comprehensive, scalable and secure solutions — to achieve this, collaboration across the board is essential. Rather than implementing technology for technology’s sake, the more we listen to and learn from our customers, the more effective we will be in solving their problems and serving their mission objectives. The sky’s the limit for any leader who can do that in a repeatable manner.

Of course, you don’t get there in one shot. I’ve worked on projects where solutions and systems must function well from a performance perspective. Sometimes, the implementations didn’t go as planned. But the last 20 years have taught me that when you fail, you learn and you improve.

Looking back at your career, what are you most proud of?

Curiously, what I’m most proud of is that I found myself in a place I never thought I’d be — contributing to citizen health, economy, and safety in the United States.

I was born and raised in India but moved to the U.S. just over 20 years ago. Following positions with startups in Silicon Valley and Manhattan, I was given the opportunity to serve in the public sector. Since then, I’ve helped government customers, including the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Commerce, the Environment Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture, overcome their most complex challenges and support missions that improve, protect and save lives. I’m immensely humbled and proud of my experience and the contributions I have made to my adopted nation.

I’ve also been privileged to collaborate with leading technology vendors like AWS, Microsoft/Azure, Google and Red Hat and bring their solutions and resources to support our customers.

What’s your best career advice for those who want to follow in your footsteps?

Don’t fear taking on new challenges or behaviors that make you uncomfortable. If you don’t experience them, you won’t know what you’re good at. So, always take the opportunity to rediscover yourself.

Collaboration is the key to being successful. Whether you’re a CTO, a manager or an engineer, we’re all part of the same game. The days of “you report to me” are over and being replaced with highly collaborative and diverse leadership driven by growth, enablement and career progression that emphasizes skills, contributions and a team connected to the broader mission.

My final piece of advice: As customer needs and challenges become more complex, don’t just throw technology at the problem. Instead, change the construct and use technology to build your own platforms/frameworks and reusable/turnkey solutions and capabilities — if you want to be a successful engineer or architect, that mindset is a gamechanger.

Meet the other Pinnacle Awards finalists here.