Zebra Sri Lanka Country Director receives ICT lifetime achievement award

Anuradha Tennakoon Sri Lanka Country Director of Zebra Technologies Lanka Ltd, 

Zebra Technologies Lanka Ltd. (formerly known as Motorola Solutions Lanka Ltd.), Sri Lanka Country Director Anuradha Tennakoon was a joint recipient of the ICT Life Time Award or Most Outstanding Contribution Award at the recently concluded 17th National Best Quality ICT Awards (NBQSA). This annual gala event was held on 9 October at the Grand Ball Room of Hotel Galadari amidst a presence of around 500 participants.

British Computer Society (BCS), The Chartered Institute for IT Sri Lanka section established in 1996 organises the National Best Quality ICT awards since 1998 and this year awards were organised under 21 student and commercial categories with several special awards including ICT Entrepreneur, Lifetime Achiever’s Award and Public Sector Award. Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) – BCS jointly sponsored ICT Lifetime Achiever Award or ‘ICT Most Outstanding Contribution Award’ is presented to an individual once only in his or her lifetime for the yeoman services rendered towards the development and shaping of the Sri Lanka’s ICT environment. 

The recipient of this prestigious award should have dedicated at least 25 continuous years of professional life to Sri Lanka’s ICT industry and record direct influence in the areas of generating ICT employment in Sri Lanka, bringing foreign exchange to the country, taking leadership in reducing the digital divide in the country, having introduced innovative ICT products or services, taken leadership to ICT Human Resource Development, having contributed the ICT policy planning, governance, law etc.

Anuradha, an industry veteran, counts over 29 years of ICT industry experience in Sri Lanka in addition to his Telecommunication Engineering tenures with British Cable & Wireless subsidiaries in Bahrain and Sultanate of Oman. He helped the US owners to establish his then company MobiNetix Systems Ltd. over 16 years ago as the first ever offshore Software Research and Development Centre of a Silican Valley based signature/capture payment terminal company when embedded software development was still at the infancy in Sri Lanka. 

Though the US company went through four acquisitions during last 16 years, the Sri Lankan entity continued to grow as a result of the work of extremely talented team of Sri Lankan engineers under the leadership of Anuradha. Sri Lankan entity ownership and the name changed from MobiNetix Systems to Crossvue to Symbol Technologies to Motorola Solutions to what it is today – Zebra Technologies. Zebra Technologies state-of-the-art R&D centre at Nawala catering for Zebra’s Mobile Computers and Scanner product lines is one of the best embedded and low level soft ware development outfits in Sri Lanka today. 

During his ICT career he has helped in setting up few other Software R&D centres under the purview of BOI which are at the fore front of Sri Lankan IT industry today. Those companies together with Zebra Technologies bring in millions of US dollars of foreign exchange annually while the combined work force counts few hundreds. Prior to his current employment, he had an over six years of illustrious marketing carrier with Informatics Ltd. during which some of Sri Lanka’s largest computerisation projects were implemented.

Anuradha’s passion to develop ICT skills among young University Undergraduates was clearly demonstrated though his brain child ‘Inter University Enterprise Mobility Software Development Competition’ subsequently re-named as the ‘Inter University Innovations Championship’. The competition went through an exponential growth during four years and became the most sought after inter university competition and also was a nominee for US Secretary of State Awards in 2012. 

In the recent past he has dedicated his time to close the digital divide in Sri Lanka. As the first step, with financial support from his US parent company, he set up a complete library and computing resource centre including the building, furniture, books and computers for a remote school with underprivileged children – Bamunugama Vidyalaya in Maho education zone. An ardent promoter of STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics ) education, again with financial support from his US parent company, he set up a complete Mathematical Lab including the building, furniture and mathematical teaching aids at a another remote school with underprivileged children – Hithokadawala Vidyalaya close to Ambanpola. 

Most recently his company Zebra together with two other R&D centres Zone24x7 and Navantis have implemented a computer network with 30 computers at Nelumpathwewa Vidyalaya at a remote corner of Maho educational zone. The most important thing is that children of these schools are from very poor families with mostly two meals a day and 95% of them had never seen or touched a computer before said Anuradha.

Anuradha as a founder member of Sri Lanka Association of Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM) has been contributing substantially from its inception to the development of IT/BPM industry in Sri Lanka. He has been a Board Member of SLASSCOM during last several years as Head of HR/Capacity forums, General Secretary and currently is its Director Finance. He also played a very active role with SLASSCOM’s predecessor Software Exporters Association to develop technical skills of IT engineers of member companies. 

He is also a founder and life member of Colombo University MBA Alumni Association and also a life member of Sri Lanka Institute of Directors. His employer Zebra Technologies is a world leader in ‘Enterprise Asset Intelligence’. Zebra has the world’s largest market share in Mobile Computers and Scanners and also a leader in Wireless LAN and micro locationing solutions. Zebra shares are traded in New York stock exchange under the symbol ‘ZBRA’.