Thakral One S’pore hails Internet Society for recognising technology pioneers in Sri Lanka

Thakral One Ltd., Singapore recently commended the Sri Lanka chapter of the Internet Society for recognising the technology pioneers who were instrumental in connecting Sri Lanka to the internet backbone 20 years ago. The Internet Society or ISOC was founded in 1992 by internet pioneers as an International Non-Profit Organisation. It has more than 100 organisational members and many thousands of individual members with over 85 local chapters worldwide. It has regional bureaus in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, South Asia and South East Asia.

Some of the distinguished names recognised at the event for their pioneering contributions to technology adoption in Sri Lanka were Professor AbhayaInduruwa, Vidya Jyothi Professor K.K.Y.W. Perera, Vidya Jyothi Prof. V.K. Samaranayake, Dr. R.B. Ekanayake and former secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunge. Among these well-known personalities in the ICT industry, another technology pioneer recognised by the Internet Society was Channa de Silva, Senior Vice President of Thakral One for Sri Lanka and Maldives.

Mr. de Silva receiving the recognitionas an Internet Pioneer from the Chief Guest Mrs. Chitrangani Mubarak,Chairperson of ICT Agency of Sri Lanka

Mr. de Silva was the Senior Systems Engineer responsible in establishing the first-ever dedicated Internet connection to Sri Lanka in May 1995 on behalf of Lanka Internet, which was the pioneer Internet Services Provider in Sri Lanka. He was also the first-ever web master for Sri Lanka by creating the first e-commerce portal (http://www.lanka.net/) in 1994. At a time when technology was sparsely used in the country, the team from Lanka Internet made giant strides by connecting the island permanently to the Internet backbone in May 1995, thus, commencing business operations for the first commercial Internet Services provider.

One of the major projects implemented under his supervision was the first newspaper online (Daily News in 1995), which not only created history in Sri Lanka but also became the first ever newspaper to go on line from this region. In addition, first radio station on-line (TNL Radio in 1996), first ever Wi-Fi network in the country for Internet access using spread spectrum technology, International IP Telephony Network, State-of-the-art NOC, F3 standard Earth Station, Network security infrastructure and first Pre-paid Internet card system (Internet-in-a-box) etc. were carried out under his leadership. Hewas also a member of the local language workgroup of Sri Lanka and contributed immensely to the efforts of enabling people to use technology in the country via local languages. He was one of the key contributors instrumental in ensuring that a Language Interface Pack was built in Sinhala and Tamil for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office in 2007.

A product of Royal College, Colombo, Mr. de Silva obtained his MBA from the Post Graduate Institute of Management, University of Sri Jayewardenepura while BSc and MSc degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the State University of New York, USA. He specialised in Data Communication for the MSc degree and his thesis was to develop and implement Novell’s Netware Core Protocol on KA9Q Operating System in 1994, which was the base for a Ham Radio Network. His final year project for BSc was developing an Optical Character Recognition software to recognise Sinhala characters as part of a project funded by the postal department of USA in 1993. He also holds distinguished memberships at Tau Beta Pai (USA), Eta Kappa Nu (USA) and Golden Key (USA) honour societies 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 of Sri Lanka.

Backed by the multi-billion dollar Thakral Group, Thakral One has presence in over 14 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, Dell, Oracle, HP, Juniper, Lenovo, HID, CA, Checkpoint, Fortinet, VMware and Temenos. 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.