Despite its inevitable ascendancy, the computer industry has been racked with turmoil. Like warring civilisations, companies rose and fell, some swallowing larger firms, others withering to nothing.
Anothai Wettayakorn, a 50-year-old Dell Technologies executive, has seen this history firsthand, and he faced it with a calmness and determination drawn from his Buddhist faith. Now the vice-president for Asian emerging markets and South Asian consumer business, he was able to climb the ladder as an industry rapidly transformed around him.
Mr Anothai has spent 15 years at Dell and witnessed the largest M&A deal in tech history, when the company acquired EMC for US$67 billion. Earlier in his career he worked at Compaq Computer Corporation, which had a huge merger of its own with Digital Equipment Corporation before Compaq's eventual acquisition by Hewlett-Packard (HP).
In his 30-year career, Mr Anothai has seen the collapse of companies widely considered unassailable.
FIRST STEPS
Mr Anothai majored in marketing at Assumption University, but during his schooling he also took computer science classes and learned to code, specifically in the COBOL programming language.
"I am a marketer that can write software programs, so I can understand the customer's needs, a unique skill that I have used my entire career," he says.
While his main academic focus was technically marketing, he put his heart into programming.
"I spent whole days in the laboratory developing stock trading software and later assisting my computer lab teacher," Mr Anothai says. "Studying marketing got me to know business, but programming taught me to think logically."
His dual skills in coding and marketing landed him his first job as a salesman at SVOA, a Thai computer distributor. Tapping his knowledge of computers, he could anticipate customer needs and generate more sales.
Mr Anothai went on to join Compaq, at the time one of the most prolific computer companies in the world, while earning a Master of Computer Science from Assumption University.
He got his master's degree at the same time as the dot-com crash of the late 1990s, when the internet industry was in turmoil and the future of computing was uncertain. He managed to retain his job at Compaq and avoided seeking ventures in the collapsing internet economy.
UPS AND DOWNS
"I've been lucky to witness so many M&As in my life," Mr Anothai says.
He's been able to learn from many failed and successful mergers. For instance, Compaq acquired several companies like Tandem Computers in order to build the business faster and expand from personal computers into enterprise computing.
Ultimately the tables turned and Compaq itself was gulped up by HP, further consolidating the computer market.
The upheaval led Mr Anothai to make another move, to Dell Thailand, which at the time was a fairly small operation of the much-larger multinational company. But Dell Thailand grew tenfold during his time there, becoming the hub of the Indochina region for Dell.
The office cultivated about 20 leadership and management employees, who were then sent out to lead operations around the region.
As Dell continued to expand and reinvent itself to keep up with the rapidly evolving and disrupting PC market, it made the massive move to acquire EMC.
The key to a successful merger is cultural integration, Mr Anothai says. Both firms must make sure that their employees share common goals for the future of the combined company.
A good outcome also requires the transparency to speak honestly with employees about the merger, provide them with a clear career path going forward and dole out rewards and compensation in a timely manner. In large M&A deals, firms must prepare in advance to make a smooth transition.
Mr Anothai considers the Dell-EMC deal a great success.
"Businesses that foresee the future, are forward-looking and are able to adjust to change first will survive and have sustainable growth," he says.
For employees who face disruption and change in the organisation, he recommends that they stay optimistic and remember that every challenge brings new opportunities.
Employee need to re-skill so that they can deliver for the company in a rapidly changing business environment. If you don't keep learning and advancing, you will fall behind in the industry, Mr Anothai says.
Working at multinational firms taught him that proper organisation management systems track key performance indicators and offer rewards to inspire teamwork and make employees see themselves more as entrepreneurs than as mere workers.
"If your team can already hit its sales targets, then you might encourage them to do an even better job," Mr Anothai says. "I always make our people grow together with the business, and I always listen and am happy to help them solve problems, fighting together side by side not just as employees, but partners."
FAITH AND PROSPERITY
Mr Anothai attributes much of his success to his adherence to the core tenants of Buddhism, including the four steps of Iddhipada. It starts with Chanda, meaning passion and aspiration.
"You need to find your passion with purpose," he says. "When you love something, you will do your best and put in effort and do it immediately."
Then comes Viriya, or diligence, a commitment to practising a skill. Then Citta, or thoughtfulness and analysis, and finally Vimamsa, or investigation, reasoning and testing.
"I know what I love doing with my passion, and I spend my life balanced with my work, and most importantly to always keep learning and never stop," he says.
During tense periods, like the uncertainty of an M&A deal or other business calamity, Mr Anothai remains optimistic about the challenge and his ability to find a solution to overcome it.
"I also play guitar on tough days," he says. "After playing music, the exhaustion disappears. I learned to play guitar when my father bought me one, and I fell in love with it. This gave me an artistic outlet, while programming skill gave me logical and scientific thinking."
THE NEXT DISRUPTION
Mr Anothai says businesses and government must prepare for new digital disruptions, as they will indelibly impact every country and industry.
Business leaders should explore the new opportunities that these disruptions provide and find partners in similar businesses or across sectors to collaboratively respond to change.
Businesses must blend senior employees with junior employees to integrate the two useful paradigms of aged experience and native technological know-how.
Mr Anothai foresees technology increasing by 10 times the capacity and performance every five years, so in 15 years the sector will be 1,000 times as advanced in terms of quantum computing, cybersecurity, automation and robotics.
"To manage digital disruption, we must re-skill workers and adjust our organisation to cope with change and scale," he says. "For policymakers, the new government needs to continue Thailand 4.0 and make our digital economy thrive."
During tense periods, Mr Anothai plays music and 'the exhaustion disappears'.