Sonata Software just made its boldest AI hire yet. The Bengaluru based modernization firm has named Hariprasad “Hari” Rebala as Chief AI Officer, a brand new role built to steer AI strategy across everything Sonata does. The timing isn’t random: enterprise clients, according to Sonata, are done tinkering with AI pilots and want the technology running inside real operations.
Rebala isn’t a typical corporate hire. He spent years building AI startups, most recently leading AI Solutions and Growth at a deep tech AI company, and earlier co founding Forfend, an IoT and conversational AI venture. But he also has serious enterprise mileage, having held senior roles at Mindtree, Capgemini and Wipro, where he ran large transformation programs, especially in financial services. That mix of startup speed and enterprise grade delivery experience is exactly why Sonata hired him, according to CEO Rajsekhar Datta Roy, who called the appointment foundational to transforming Sonata into what he described as an “AI native organization.”
Here’s the challenge Rebala is walking into: most enterprises today aren’t struggling to access AI models, they’re struggling to make AI actually work inside legacy systems, tight security rules, and a tangle of vendors. Getting a proof of concept built is easy. Getting it into production, at scale and safely, is where most companies stall out. “AI alone will not define the winners,” Rebala said following the announcement. “The ability to translate AI into enterprise velocity will.”
Sonata is leaning on its partnerships with Microsoft, AWS, Salesforce and Snowflake to make that happen, along with its own Platformation framework for modernization work. The company’s AI engineering teams already operate across retail, manufacturing, tech, telecom, healthcare and financial services, and with almost 40 years in business and over 6,400 AI engineers, Sonata serves clients across the U.S., U.K., India, Malaysia, Mexico, Australia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Nordics.
The bigger takeaway is that IT services firms aren’t just adopting AI anymore, they’re rebuilding their leadership structures around it, and Sonata’s bet is that Rebala can turn that shift into an actual advantage rather than just a headline.
