30 Minute Interview

“Managing security is an integral part of managing IT today”

Joe Wang, CEO & President, LANDesk Sofware explains the trends in the security space and his company’s plans for the future.

Is security seen as a part of managing IT?

One trend that we have discovered is that security has emerged as an integral part of the management framework. In the past, companies would buy security products separately but now the security market has evolved such that corporates look at things on a holistic scale. Managing security is an integral part of managing IT today. As a result, companies are looking at solutions that offer both protection and management in a single product.

If we look at last year’s figures, the industry grew by about six to nine percent worldwide and our company grew close to 30 percent. The reason for this is that LANDesk provides both management and security in one solution. This trend will continue as it makes the product simpler to manage, easier to use and cheaper.

What are the key threats on the mobile front?

We treat the desktop users and mobile users the same. We designed a special feature security solution for mobile users. For example, one of the features we introduced last year was the capability of scanning. It means that whenever a mobile user comes back to office and connects to network, we do a scan. LANDesk manages the network. Similarly when any user logs on to his laptop, our product scans the laptop and makes sure it has an anti-virus solution in place, and it’s a clean machine with no viruses and spyware. Only when we are sure that the machine is secure we allow the user to log in. We also have the LANDesk handheld manager that manages handheld devices.

Do you have an India-specific strategy?

LANDesk is a global company and half of our total business comes from outside the US. For us APAC is strategic as it has high growth potential and India is a crucial market. India has several large companies that will need the manageability technology which we have on offer.

We have a customer base of 15,000 worldwide; many are MNCs with Indian subsidiaries. It makes lot of sense for us to get active here. To name a few customers, ICICI Bank is one of our biggest customers. Emerson, Convergence, ST Microelectronic are among the others. In all we have around 100 customers in India.

In terms of verticals, our focus is on the financial, manufacturing and telecom segments. We have registered considerable success in telecom and manufacturing. We are also looking at the SMB segment.

Our strategy will revolve around creating demand, devising channel partner programmes and building customer relations. Our main aim is not just to sell products but to ensure that the customer is benefitted by our offerings. That is also our differentiation factor.

Another strategy is that whenever we go to a country, we tie up with strong partners. We are strong in technology, and understand our limitations and don’t pretend to show that we know everything about the market. These partners provide solutions around our products and together we deliver them to customers. Allied Digital is one of our partners in India.

Any specific products for the Indian market?

We do not develop products for a specific region or market because we believe that the IT need for any company worldwide is similar. We recently acquired a company that offered business process management. The reason why we acquired this company was that we had the basic technology and information that provided higher level executives a better business value.

For example, a company makes a policy that whenever it hires a new employee it will take the following steps—give him a new PC, provide access to particular applications, and stick to a particular security compliance policy. Once these things are well defined the company becomes worry-free. Underneath will be our technology which will make sure everything is in place. This is how we work with our partners. We try to strengthen our security management more on the business processes side. We aim at providing more business value to our customers.

Recently, Avocent acquired your company. Can you elaborate on the developments?

Avocent provides remote access to enterprise data centres and remote branches. They provide remote accessibility. Avocent felt the need for having a strong management solution. That is the reason why they acquired our company. We have the strongest technology in the management space and they wanted to work with us so that they could provide a complete solution to their customers. Having said this, though Avocent acquired us, LANDesk continues to operate as an independent business unit.

LANDesk was a part of Intel earlier, what are your relations with that company at present?

We still work with Intel but we are not part of Intel. In 2002, we got separated and became an independent company. The server department of Intel still ships our software along with Intel server boards and the desktop division still offers our solution to the Intel board customers. They use our products internally.

Our software division under Intel was into technology and helped Intel set up more hardware but as a business it was not growing. At the end, they had flat revenues because being a software business under a large corporate company had its limitations. Hence, Intel wisely decided to divide the company and function better.

—Megha Banduni