It’s fascinating, looking back at something as complex and profoundly impactful as IT. And for Claudé Zamboni, who is preparing to retire after over 40 years in the sector, it’s been an incredible time to be deeply involved in technology.
Before beginning his career, Zamboni attended UCLA and got involved with IT at a postgraduate level. At the time, it was known as IS. At that point, it was a fairly new field of study and Zamboni found himself intrigued. The aerospace industry was also experiencing a boom in southern California at the time. Interested in this too, Zamboni secured a job as a developer in the satellite division. However, he soon realised that most of his enthusiasm was for the application itself and the people he was working with. That led him to follow the management stream and begin looking after small teams.
Moving to cellular technology
He got into applications more heavily when Oracle came onto his radar, and he started working with that suite in its early days. After years in aerospace, he shifted to cellular technology. He started working for a small startup, which eventually became AT&T Wireless. The cellular business in the late 90s was extremely lucrative, so it was a great opportunity to buy a lot of equipment and do interesting things with the best available technology.
When the organisation became part of the AT&T brand, Zamboni was made head of the national Y2K effort, which also exposed him to a lot of new applications. He continued working closely with the Oracle suite, and across multiple other technology companies, until he moved to QSC 12 years ago.
“It’s the longest tenure of anything I’ve done,” says Zamboni. “I wanted to go private again, and QSC was having issues with Oracle, which is why I came in. They called me asking for help, when I was developing global outreach at Powerwave Technologies, a cellular substation manufacturer. They kept trying to bring me on, and in mid-2012, they asked me to lead the organisation.”
A shift in the IT industry
When Zamboni reflects on his 40+ years in the IT industry, it’s not only the technology that’s changed, but IT as a function. Gone are the days of siloed tech teams that work silently in the background and barely touch the rest of the business. Now, it has to be a fully integrated function that has tendrils across organisations.
“There have been monumental changes from when I first entered IT, where it was basically a black box,” says Zamboni. “People didn’t know what the IT team was doing, and those in IT would just handle problems without telling anyone how. It only started to become more egalitarian when the internet got more pervasive. We realised that with information being available everywhere, we would lose the centralisation function of IT. But that was okay, because data is universal.”
The human touch
Zamboni maintains that the human element is vital. Vital to AI, and vital to the way technology and IT are evolving. Even as people replace and enhance certain tasks using technology, they’re still a piece of the puzzle. For technology businesses, it’s important to still have relationships with customers, even in an age where those customers don’t always want to have to talk to another person to get the answer they want.
“There’s a societal difference between age groups, certainly, but everyone is asking the same question: what’s the fastest way to get the information I want?” Zamboni states. “For many, they don’t want to make a phone call. If there’s a quicker way, that’s great. But sometimes, you need to speak to someone about a problem that’s not so black and white. That’s where customer interface and interaction still needs to be there. We can’t abandon the human touch; it’s vital for our own psychological makeup. We’re social animals. I think what we’re going to see is an evolution of our ability to handle problems that strikes a balance between technology and humanity.”
