FEATURE: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Intelligent CIO unpacks the
merger, massive scaling,
security transformation
and becoming your own
customer with Micro Focus
Chief Marketing Officer,
Genefa Murphy.
T
he September 2017 spin merger
with Hewlett Packard Enterprise
transformed UK-based Micro
Focus into one of the world’s
largest software vendors seemingly
overnight. Now that Micro Focus has
settled into its position as a global leader
in software, Intelligent CIO sits down with
Micro Focus Chief Marketing Officer, Genefa
Murphy, in Dubai to discuss life after the
merger, becoming its own customer and the
state of Digital Transformation.
The US$8.8 billion deal has allowed Micro
Focus to expand into a variety of new market
domains, and leverage HPE’s past successes
in hybrid IT, Big Data analytics, enterprise
service management and enterprise security.
In spite of its relatively recent growth,
Murphy maintains that Micro Focus has
maintained its customer-focused mission
– to help guide customers on their Digital
Transformation journey in a way that allows
them to innovate faster, take on lower risk
and keep their data and infrastructure safe.
While the mission of Micro Focus has
remained the same – helping customers
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
to run and transform their business and
innovate faster with lower risk – there have
been some inevitable changes to their
internal processes.
The quick and massive expansion of Micro
Focus after the merger has put the company
in a similar position to many of its customers.
Specifically, the company is scaling up rapidly,
while needing to maintain the best-in-class
business processes, security and infrastructure
that sets it apart from its competitors.
“We went from a few 100 products in
our portfolio to nearly 400. We now have
approximately 5000 engineers and scan
nearly 10 to 20 million lines of code daily
using our Fortify security solutions,” Murphy
said of life after the merger. “As part of the
merger, we also had to initiate a dramatic
IT transformation, from applications to
infrastructure to processes and training. To
manage this shift successfully, we run Micro
Focus on Micro Focus.”
This is the type of full Digital Transformation
that Micro Focus has been guiding its
customers through for years, says Murphy.
Digital Transformation as a process has
been going on for more than 10 years
across industries and regions. With the deep
Internet penetration in the Gulf region,
Murphy reports that Micro Focus customers
are pushing to modernise their processes
and infrastructure to meet their customers’
changing expectations.
Bridging the gap
Regionally, Micro Focus has seen an uptick in
the customer expectations that are driving
Digital Transformation. That, coupled with
Scaling up and
becoming a global
software leader
40
INTELLIGENTCIO
www.intelligentcio.com