Zebra Technologies Lanka (Private) Limited (formerly known as Motorola Solutions Lanka (Private) Limited) Sri Lanka Country Director Anuradha Tennakoon was a joint recipient of  ICT life time award or Most Outstanding Contribution Award  at the recently concluded 17th  National Best Quality ICT Awards (NBQSA). 

This annual event was held on 9th October at  the Hotel Galadari amidst a presence of  around 500 participants.

British Computer Society (BCS) , The Chartered Institute for IT Sri Lanka section established in 1996  organizes the National Best Quality ICT awards since 1998 and this year awards were organized 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 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 Oman. He helped  the US owners  to establish his then company MobiNetix Systems (Private) Limited over 16 years ago as the first ever offshore Software Research & Development Center of a Silican Valley based signature/capture payment terminal company when embedded software development was still at the infancy in Sri Lanka. 

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. 

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  it’s 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 &  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”.