CXO of the Week: Saurabh Saxena, Country Head – India, Micro Focus

Micro Focus is one of the enterprise software providers, focused on solving the IT dilemma—how to balance today’s needs with tomorrow’s opportunities. It delivers mission-critical technology that helps tens of thousands of customers worldwide manage core IT elements of their business. Strengthened by our strategic services and support organizations, and an extensive partner network, our broad set of technologies for security, IT operations, application delivery, governance, modernization, and analytics provides the innovative solutions organizations need to run and transform— at the same time.

Saurabh Saxena is the Country Director for Micro Focus, India. Saurabh is responsible for driving revenue success, alignment to region business strategy, and delivering valuable business outcomes through bridging the gap between existing and emerging technologies—so customers can innovate faster, with less risk, in the race to digital transformation. A 19-year IT industry veteran, he has extensive specialist experience spanning sales management, major account management, customer relationship management and business development.

We recently interacted with Saurabh Saxena, Country Head – India, Micro Focus. He shared the techniques and tactics utilised by software providers, his entrepreneurial journey, the company’s growth, and much more.

Read below to know more about it.

Introduction.

Micro Focus is an enterprise software providers, focused on solving the IT dilemma—how to balance today’s needs with tomorrow’s opportunities. We deliver mission-critical technology that helps tens of thousands of customers worldwide manage core IT elements of their business.

As the Country Director at Micro Focus my role is to help businesses pivot in their journey toward digital innovation with high-quality enterprise-grade scalable solutions. I have over 25 years of experience in sales management, account management, customer relationship management and business development. At Micro Focus I am responsible for delivering valuable business outcomes by bridging the gap between existing and emerging technologies to aid customers run and transform in the digital era with agility and less risk.

Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers?

One of the leading providers of enterprise software in the world, Micro Focus helps clients manage their core IT components globally so they can run and transform at the same time by deploying mission-critical technology and digital solutions. Organizations need a high level of IT flexibility to undergo the technology transition from legacy to cloud without any disruption while ensuring high returns on the investment to evolve in this era of digital acceleration. We are a pureplay software OEM, striving to deliver the highest customer satisfaction with agility and seamless software deployment through our solutions distributed under distinct product groups. We provide enterprise-scale technology with upgraded capabilities to support key outcomes that the customers desire.

How has the adoption of hybrid IT/cloud evolved over the last few years?

Due to the pandemic, businesses globally had to make significant changes in their IT infrastructure to ensure business continuity. To enable remote working and give employees access from anywhere, hybrid IT is the way to go. By the end of 2022, IDC forecasts that 70% of organizations will have integrated cloud management using unified hybrid/multi-cloud technologies, management tools, and processes. Setting the business on an upward growth trajectory involves optimizing workloads, ensuring cyber resiliency, and reducing resource costs. As technologies get integrated, IT teams are investing to explore the many opportunities of the hybrid cloud transforming their businesses into next-generation powerhouses through DevOps, cloud-native platforms, and better sync in the organization.

Micro Focus is uniquely positioned to help organizations face the digital dilemma to deliver value while running day-to-day and transforming for the future at the same time. Knowing that every customer is unique with different requirements for success, our broad portfolio of enterprise software and professional services provides the flexibility to solve the most pressing challenges—from planning to execution, and adoption to optimization. By fusing existing and new technologies, we help our customers become digital-first:

• Simplify IT transformations: Scale agile operations continuously throughout the enterprise's IT ecosystems, from mainframe to cloud solutions without unnecessary complexity
• Accelerate Application Delivery: Securely and quickly expedite application delivery and speed testing
• Cyber Resilience: Defending against cybersecurity risks and identification of security flaws in software, identity, and data
• Analyse in Time to Act: Analytics powered by cutting-edge technologies provide businesses with higher levels of insight and prediction accuracy
• Modernize Core Applications: Modernising application, process, and infrastructure to achieve faster speed to market, competitive advantage, and cost savings to aid the digital transformation journey from mainframe to cloud and beyond

Which industry verticals are you currently focusing on? And what is your go-to-market strategy for the same?

The increased digital appetite post the pandemic has witnessed increased traction across sectors, especially the government and public sector, BFSI, and IT-ITeS. We have collaborated with the Government of India on more than 50% of India’s Smart City projects and large-scale Digital India projects such as BharatNet, State Data Centers, and State-wide Area. The IT – ITeS sector is observing a rise in importance for DevSecOps and the banking space for DevOps and fast application delivery as they become more mindful of customer experience and security. We have been helping FSI and public sector customers increase the number of concurrent users on their digital platforms through our application load testing portfolio. Businesses are also integrating automation in their application lifecycle with a focus on functional and performance testing. With the aid of our partners, we work with multiple state governments on smart city projects to provide digital solutions which maximise the operation efficiencies of smart cities and enhance cyber resilience.

We are a channel-focused business with over 40 years of experience and 7500+ authorized partners to help customers maximize their existing software investments while innovating to become digital first. Our Partner Boost program in India and the APJ region supports our partners making collaboration easier with high profitability. As our global network of partners is responsible for delivering the highest level of customer satisfaction, we are continuously working towards expanding our partner ecosystem through initiatives like upskilling and cross-selling programs, portfolio adjustments, training, certifications, incentives, and demand generation support. With over 90% of engagements done with the end customers through partners, we ensure increased engagement, cyber resilience and digital capability scores and more prospects for higher revenue generation.

How will work-from-home lead to a paradigm shift in the IT industry?

Remote working has not been disruptive as initially feared by businesses, rather has become a preferred way of working for most employees in newer work models. As a result, data-centric security becomes more important for the work-from-home workforce wherein instead of a patchwork of security solutions, we focus on the data that is now stored on user machines at home. This ensures that only the people with the right privileges can access the files. Work from home will also make zero trust no longer optional. Zero trust necessitates components to work together in an auditable and verifiable way with identity and access management a crucial point in security for the distributed workforce.

What advice would you give to the new-age leaders?

The approach to leadership is constantly evolving with new generations spearheading the direction for organisation success, culture, and employee wellbeing. Leaders should practise a healthy combination of traditional values and new age mentoring with a focus on transformational agenda. Foresightedness, grit, character, empathy, and resilience are the primary traits one must have to guide employees and strategically plan for accomplishment. My advice to new age leaders is to be a good listener, creative thinker and always be ready to embrace change to deliver more value to customers.