“The Cloud offers organizations the ability to enhance operations and software development, improve efficiency, and increase the bottom line with lower total cost of ownership.”
Hi Muhi, welcome to our CIO Influence interview series. Please tell us a little bit about your background and your current role at OpenText. How did you arrive at this company?
Thank you for letting me be a part of this conversation. I’ve been involved with software and products for more than two decades. During that time, I’ve worn many hats – I’ve been an engineer, developer coder, product developer and a product manager.
Professionally, I spent sixteen years at Oracle, served as Chief of Products for NorthgateArinso, and held the position of Senior Vice President of Product Development for CA Technologies, Inc. In 2012, I joined OpenText, where I lead the development organization to define the vision and strategy for OpenText products and their transition to the cloud.
OpenText and I share the same passion – we love working with customers. One of my favorite aspects of the work we do is to take a challenge from a customer and show them a program that solves it or automate a business process that makes it ten times more effective. We’re always finding ways to bring value to everything we do.Â
We know OpenText as a leading enterprise information management solutions provider. How have you transformed your business positioning in the last 3 years?
Over time, OpenText has expanded the content we manage from experience data, operational data, supply chain data, IT automation and IT data. Today, we also manage, secure and provide insights into big unstructured data for small and medium-sized businesses and enterprise organizations. In January 2023, OpenText acquired Micro Focus, and as one unified OpenText, we are well-positioned to deliver significant value for companies going through digital transformation and looking to own their digital capabilities.
While much has changed in our company, our fundamental goals have not – we remain a company driven by innovation, customer outcomes and a belief that the future of growth is both sustainable and inclusive.Â
Read More : CIO Influence Interview with Antoine Jebara, Co-Founder and GM, MSP Products at JumpCloud
What are your core offerings in the Cloud and DevOps space?
OpenText is focused on helping customers digitally transform their operations to support modern work, connect to global commerce and engage their customers with stellar experiences. We build everything on a foundation of security, automation, AI and tools for developers, all to empower businesses of all sizes to become intelligent, secure and connected.
This is all anchored on OpenText Cloud Editions. Through five specialized clouds, each focused on addressing a key business need, OpenText Cloud Editions delivers the path to making it all possible.
Last June, we announced the OpenText Cloud Platform which was built to provide a common platform for consuming all OpenText software and services. This is a unified platform for cloud applications, integrations, and microservices, which is all available to customers either off-cloud, in a private cloud or with a public cloud.
Specifically for ValueEdge, this is a cloud-based DevOps and Value Stream Management platform. It is a composable solution for DevOps management and automation, with optional Acceleration Modules that span the entire digital value stream, from planning to delivery.
 What are CIOs looking for in their Cloud investments? What are the biggest factors that lead a CIO to pick OpenText as their cloud platform?
The Cloud offers organizations the ability to enhance operations and software development, improve efficiency, and increase the bottom line with lower total cost of ownership. Cloud adoption also strengthens security and improves the ability to meet increasingly stricter compliance regulations.
The reality is that each organization has its own digital environment and a unique set of business needs in which it operates. OpenText is cognizant of this, and we do not force customers to fit their cloud strategy into a box; we enable customers to build a box around their cloud strategy, which is why CIOs are trusting OpenText. We offer flexibility with our proven Cloud solutions, whether it is for cybersecurity, DevOps, backup and disaster recovery, or other mission-critical operations, or for an integrated strategy that incorporates all or some cloud operations. OpenText also features four deployment options: Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Off-Cloud and Cloud API Services. In addition to a robust portfolio of cloud solutions and editions, OpenText provides excellent customer support and professional services to help our customer to get most value possible out of their cloud investment now and to automatically incorporate new technologies and overcome future challenges.Â
Read More : CIO Influence Interview with Lior Yaari, CEO and Co-Founder at Grip Security
You recently announced the latest version of ValueEdge23. Could you please tell us more about this platform and how it accelerates DevOps lifecycle?
ValueEdge23 is the latest version of the ValueEdge DevOps and Value Stream Management platform. It accelerates the DevOps lifecycle by automating activities across the lifecycle. New for ValueEdge23 are three especially powerful capabilities for this acceleration: Strategic Planning for an Agile World, Codeless Quality and Real-world Performance Engineering.Â
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot are bringing new concepts of automated bot-powered DevOps tools to the software development industry. How do you prepare for these disruptions at OpenText?
We are actively conducting R&D with generative AI and see great potential with it for DevOps in general and quality. Stay tuned!
Security and data protection challenges continue to impact Cloud performance and resilience. Could you share some tips with the CIOs and CISOs on how to prevent cloud-centric cybersecurity attacks and data breaches?
OpenText Security solutions help find information, no matter where it is buried, to effectively conduct investigations, manage risk and respond to incidents. Organizations rely on them to proactively prevent and detect threats across ever-expanding attack surfaces. For anyone looking to prevent cloud-centric cybersecurity attacks and data breaches, we’d recommend these four tactics: modernize your security capabilities, secure remote workforces, uncover hidden threats and support a zero-trust strategy.
What’s next for the OpenText product development team? What is your vision for AI and Analytics at OpenText?
As information grows more complex and extensive, organizations must explore new ways of harnessing it to help people work better and smarter, enable individuals to experience and trust information and truly deliver on the promise of the Information Age. That is what we will do through our product development.
As it relates to AI & Analytics, we are focused on delivering a comprehensive set of tools that help enterprises overcome data challenges at their pace. We work to ensure a smooth path towards AI technologies focused on improved decision making, document transformation and sensitive data discovery for risk identification.
It is going to be all about being AI lead, security enabled and cloud ready. Â
Your predictions on the future of cloud-based VSM and DevOps integrations tools.
Our Project Titanium is the future of information management in the cloud and the next step in the company’s cloud journey. Project Titanium solidifies the organization’s strategic position as a global leader in information management, giving customers the simplicity, flexibility, and trust to thrive in today’s dynamic times through the cloud-based information management.
We predict that the current forest of DevOps tooling will simplify around cloud-based platforms like ValueEdge. This simplification enables faster speed-to-value even as it makes for an easily manageable toolchain.
Read More: CIO Influence Interview with Herb Kelsey, Federal CTO at Dell Technologies
Thank you, Muhi ! That was fun and we hope to see you back on cioinfluence.com soon.
[To participate in our interview series, please write to us at sghosh@martechseries.com]
Muhi S. Majzoub is the Chief Product Officer for OpenText. Joining the company in 2012, Muhi has held various senior executive positions. He currently leads the development organization to define the vision and strategy for OpenText products and their transition to the cloud. Prior to OpenText, Muhi was Chief of Products for NorthgateArinso, where he was responsible for defining the company’s product vision, strategy and the development life cycle. He focused on consolidating the late software portfolio and developing new product capabilities for both cloud and on-premises solutions.
Muhi has also held the position of Senior Vice President of Product Development for CA, Inc., where he was responsible for the development of the common technology platform and components and integration strategy. Prior to CA, Muhi was Vice President of Product Development at Oracle Corporation. During his tenure at Oracle, he was responsible for the delivery of the Sales Automation Suite, including Sales Online TeleSales, Sales Compensation, Sales Intelligence and many other Internet technology projects, such as Oracle Store, Oracle.com and the MetaLink TAR system. Muhi attended San Francisco State University.
OpenText, The Information Company, enables organizations to gain insight through market leading information management solutions, powered by OpenText Cloud Editions.
