WeAreDelphix: Meet Ranzo Taylor III

Ranzo Taylor III is VP of Technical Services at Delphix and leads an amazing team of technical experts to provide top-notch solutions for customers. Read this spotlight to learn about his role, his best piece of career advice, and more.

What do you do at Delphix and what inspired you to join the company?

Like most folks at Delphix, I wear a lot of hats. As the VP of Technical Services, I lead an amazing team of technical experts who perform the heavy lifting after the point of sale. We are the ones who ensure that our product delivers on its promise to customers. I work cross-functionally with the product management, engineering, customer success, and sales engineering teams to act as the voice of the customer, build new use cases and offerings, define best practices, and provide top-notch solutions for any issues we find.

I was pitched on Delphix during my last role as VP of Global Data Operations for Business Wire, a leader in the press release and disclosure business. As the customer, I immediately saw the potential of Delphix. It solved long standing reliability issues with core systems and delivered a level of service our developers never dreamed was possible. It paid for itself in hard dollar savings.

I was lucky enough to enter the company at a great time. I certainly bit off a big challenge coming to a fast growing startup, but it was a great decision. The technology is game changing, and the people are smart and sincere.

You can ask me anything about…?

How technical service teams can support the growth of an enterprise technology firm.

What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on at Delphix?

Developing our platform extensions and data connectors. There’s an explosion of data sources in the market, and to keep up with customer demand we needed a new approach. Working with engineering, product, and support, the field services team has opened the way for wider database support for NoSQL, Big Data, and even mainframe data sources. In addition to bringing extensibility to data masking, Delphix is the only data platform that supports everything from Kubernetes to mainframe to enable and accelerate digital transformation.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

You don’t need a title to be a leader.

We all sometimes feel less than empowered to make positive change and can’t understand why the folks around us don’t see the problem and fix it. You have to put yourself in the other person’s position and try to understand their perspective. Empathy is really important in being an effective leader. Most of us already have this core human skill, we just have to be willing to use it and trust it in business situations.

Once you understand where they’re coming from, you can rally people to your side, inspire them, and lead the whole team to a better place.

In other words, you can talk to people and work on problems together long before you’re in a position of authority. Don’t let a lack of title hold you back from discussing and tackling some of the big problems you see around you.

What’s your secret talent?

Appearing calm and relaxed, even when I’m very serious and focused. It comes with a lot of practice and experience, and being exposed to demanding situations and managing through them. Panic and fear are natural responses that can’t be avoided, but you can certainly learn to work through them.

What song instantly puts you in a good mood?

“You Make Loving Fun” by Fleetwood Mac.

What drives you everyday?

I’m driven every day by the need to build something amazing. Lots of days that’s Delphix, but sometimes it’s a great meal, building a Gundam model with my daughter, a piano duet with my son, or just a memory that will last.