Rahul Koul

Overview of the Role

As a Pre-sales Solution Lead Cloud I am responsible for overseeing the design of cloud-based solutions for an organization. I works closely with business leaders to understand their needs and develop the cloud solutions that meet those needs. Works with a team of Pre-sales architects, Sales Account Manager, Solution Architects and Vendors to manage the cloud solutions. Duties include but are not limited too.

• Lead the Solution Experts: Managing the Cloud Solutions for RFP, RFI,RFQ and ensuring a balanced workload and time to complete business demands as well as meet personal development. Review all solutions and ensure they meet customer requirements before presenting to the customers.
• Contribute to the Cloud Strategy: Develop and implement a cloud strategy for the organization which includes evaluating cloud vendors and services.
• Develop new offers and bundles: Development new offers and bundles aligning to market trends and Orange value proposition
• Develop replicable solutions and products: Review won projects and develop replicable solutions that would facilitate sellers to easily pitch and close sales.
• Go-To-Market and Partner Engagement: Work with strategic partners and develop GTM’s across the India and Asia Pacific region.
• Sales Enablement: Develop collateral, presentation and customer facing content to enable sales to articulate the value of Cloud to internal and external stakeholders.
• Sales: Work with the accounts team to find new logos, expand existing accounts and call new leads or prospects.
• Enable Successful Delivery: Work closely with the professional services team and ensure the solution proposed and signed was delivered correctly, within budget and learn from any mistakes or lessons for future solutions.

Maintaining relationships:

• Support Country’s Product / Channel Sales Team in prospecting new opportunities in Cloud & Hybrid Cloud.
• Align strategies with customer expectations and global policies.
• Conduct customer workshops to accelerate sales opportunities.
• Create and maintain technical documentation to a high professional standard.
• Participate in deep technical discussions with customers.
• Collaborate with sales teams, enterprise architecture teams, subject matter experts, and customers.
• Support multiple opportunities simultaneously.
• Work with clients across industries.
• Own end-to-end responsibility for the solution in complex, competitive deal pursuits.
• Lead C-level conversations with client stakeholders to align the company's solution with client interests while also selling capabilities.

As a Cloud Solution Architect, I prepare technical and commercial proposals, design cloud-centric solutions, lead transformation programs, and maintain stakeholder relationships. My expertise includes server, network, cloud services, storage, and datacenter technologies. I collaborate with sales teams, subject matter experts, and clients to provide innovative solutions, develop use cases, and articulate views/roadmaps for infrastructure operations. I conduct customer workshops, participate in deep technical discussions, and lead C-level conversations to align solutions with client interests.

RFP / Sales:

• Prepare technical & commercial presentations, SOW’s, proposals based on RFI & RFP.
• Own and drive the RFP process, including due diligence, solution presentation, pricing, SOW support, and proposal submission.
• Work as a key member of the sales pursuit team to develop a winnable and deliverable solution that underpins the client value proposition and business case.
• Deliver product messaging using techniques like whiteboard and slide presentations, product demonstrations, white papers, and RFI response documents.

Solutioning:

• Architect and design cloud-centric solutions using IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS capabilities.
• Lead large scale transition and transformation programs as a Lead Architect.
• Develop transformation strategy and roadmap for customer's infrastructure landscape.
• Create high-level designs, functional specifications, SOWs, and migration strategies.
• Analyze architecture pain points for cost-effective technical solutions.
• Assist with the development of a solutions strategy to meet customer’s requirements and business goals.
• Strong knowledge in Datacenter technologies: Compute, virtualization, storage, backup, archive, software-defined Data Center, hyper-converged solutions (Key platforms include Nutanix, Cisco, DELL, VMware, etc.).
• Experience with Cloud Transformation/Optimization or Cloud Migration (Lift-Shift or Lift-Tinker-Shift, App Modernize (Monolith to Microservices) projects with Enterprise customers in a multi-region, multi-availability zone heterogeneous cloud environment.
• Strong knowledge in Cloud technologies: Cloud assessment, IaaS, PaaS transformation, Cloud Migration, Cloud Automation (Key Platforms include AWS, VMware on AWS, Azure, AVS, GCP).
• Support mission-critical technology components with DR, Backup capabilities.
• Knowledge in Micro Services, Containerization, Kubernetes Services, Serverless Architecture, Migration & DevOps.
• Use configuration management and automation tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Chef, Salt, etc.
• Provide solution proposals and pre-sales technical support by identifying requirements and designing Hybrid Cloud solutions.
• Demonstrate architectural best practices across technologies to solve client problems and articulate views/roadmaps for future infrastructure operations.
• Design solutions around DC Infrastructure Migration and Transformation.
• Good knowledge of managed services concepts like IT Service Management, Agile practices, AIOps
• Develop solution technical use cases, case study, POCs and POVs.
• Recommend solution strategies, enterprise architectures, migration tools, and cloud infrastructure required for a complete solution.
• Define solution scope and involve Solution Architects from other disciplines (Apps, Data, Cloud, Infrastructure) to build a cohesive solution.
• Work with other Solution Architects to provide inputs for estimation and review their outputs. Define our strategy and shape the deal.
• Inspire service line architects and peers to solve problems with innovative solutions, leveraging technical competencies.

Part of Professional Services Team, responsible for designing and implementing VMware SDDC Solutions including vSphere

• Installing ESXi servers on fresh hardware while working on all kinds of
• Hardware’s hosting VMware like HP, Dell, IBM rack-mounted and blade servers including Cisco UCS and various v-block families
• Managing over 300 ESXi servers for daily tasks such as resource management and alarm monitoring
• Managing entire lifecycle of VMware environment which includes patching and upgrades
• Lead a team of consultants
• Building VMware systems

• Managing around 3000 Servers (Virtual and Physical)
• DNS and DHCP administration
• Handling requests for Physical to Virtual conversion of servers using VMware converter.