With many talented, veteran company hands jockeying for the top slot, CapGemini COO Thierry Delaporte didn't get picked to be the company's next CEO. Instead, Aiman Ezzat[1] got the job. It will either be the best thing to have happened to Delaporte, or the worst, depending on how the next few years go for him.
Delaporte, a self-touted sailor[2], apparently decided to seize this opportunity to take a six-month sabbatical; to cross a few oceans in his sailboat before deciding what his next move would be. But instead of taking that journey, he found himself being wooed and ultimately handed the reins of a vessel that, by comparison, is far more sluggish and cumbersome to operate -- namely, the CEO-ship of Indian IT Services firm Wipro.
Wipro has historically been one of the big three along with Infosys and Tata Consulting Services, not just in revenue, but in acclaim as well. It has a reputation for integrity[3] and was, till not very long ago, a legitimate member of the holy trinity in Indian IT for almost two decades along with TCS and Infosys.
During the first 15 years of India's IT story, soaring growth was all these companies saw as they maintained, managed, and developed the IT backbone for much of the world's companies. It was easy money and largely a labour arbitrage business.
But digital has since ripped a giant hole in that model, enough to probably cause its eventual demise in a few years' time. The last five years or so has been a mad scramble, with Indian IT ditching the old model, retraining furiously, and getting attuned to the necessity of design thinking.