Blog of Roger Greene, CEO

Part of our mission is to eliminate complexity for IT departments by taking what is possible and making it practical. It turns out that in software that is very difficult to do. In the 90′s, we targeted small and medium sized businesses, for whom IT and networking were quickly becoming critical to the bottom line. These businesses had tight budgets, small staffs and high expectations. The last thing they had time or money for was a complex enterprise solution, one that required large teams of people to evaluate, implement and maintain. In many cases, enterprise software was so complex that a customer would be lucky to have even one employee who knew how to use it. (It was for that very reason that WhatsUp Gold was born.)

Small businesses couldn’t afford and didn’t want enterprise software; if it was the only alternative, they did without. Back then, enterprise software was like an oil tanker – when you got it on course it could get you where you wanted to go, but making changes took a huge effort and a very long time. There were many customizations and improvements that just weren’t possible – you couldn’t get there from here.

So we created products that didn’t require a visit, or often even a conversation with us. We made it easy to download a trial copy. We worked hard to solve real problems, eliminate complexity and make life easier for IT departments. And small businesses who had been doing without found an answer – products from Ipswitch and a few other companies like us who were working to reduce the cost of using IT software.

We were thankful that enterprise software companies were bogged down in their bureaucracy and vast, unmanageable code – it created opportunity for us and other new companies who looked at the issue a different way. We asked how we could meet IT users’ needs in ways that didn’t require long sales cycles and large teams to sell and support. We figured if we did that, evaluating, implementing and using our products would be much easier for customers. We could focus on producing software and keep our sales, marketing and support departments at a manageable size. We could grow faster and more profitably.

Enterprise software companies took a different and easier approach to wooing small businesses – they removed features from their enterprise products, slapped on a new name and announced their small business version. But software doesn’t work that way. Eliminating functionality from a complex product doesn’t make it simple, it just makes it less functional. To make a product simple, you must start with an understanding of the customer’s needs and design a new way of addressing their needs that starts out simple!

Things have changed since the 90′s. Enterprise IT departments have felt the budget crunch; expectations remain high, with smaller budgets for staff, equipment and software. The result is that even enterprises have a hard time justifying and using enterprise software. Something has to change, and that change has started. Emerging enterprise vendors have adopted our approach of making it easier to evaluate, purchase and use software by addressing real customer needs and enhancing the customer experience at every stage. Legacy enterprise software continues to take a beating, because it takes vast amounts of energy to even begin to change course for an enterprise software tanker, and dramatic change or simplification is not practical or even possible.

As Ipswitch adds products, whether by development or acquisition, we keep this in mind. If starting from scratch, we use small teams with a deep knowledge of customer needs, and ask them to focus on customer experience. When looking for companies to become part of Ipswitch, good technology is a requirement, but most important is the people – do they have an entrepreneurial spirit? Do they thrive with limited resources? Are they creative? Do they focus on customer satisfaction? Are they passionate about quality? Do they work well in teams? By asking these questions, we have been fortunate to find four exceptional companies to join Ipswitch.

Because of the markets we are in and the ways the economy has shaped them, these days we sell more often to enterprise customers, not just to departments, which we have been doing for years, but for enterprise-scale needs. This has been true for both our network management division and especially our file transfer division.

In the case of network management, we have expanded our core WhatsUp Gold product family in a modular way that provides important enterprise functionality as needed, all designed with the same objectives – keep it simple to learn and use and make sure it solves real problems. We will keep expanding the range and depth of the WhatsUp Gold family to address more of the network management space. For WhatsUp Gold, medium businesses have been the principal driver, because they are large enough to have networks big enough to require management. Medium size companies often have networks as complex as enterprises these days, making WhatsUp Gold a fit for many larger companies.

In the case of secure file transfer, the market need has been driven by the enterprise; for bigger companies, data security has become paramount; for smaller companies it is more of a second or third tier issue. Enterprises need solutions now. We have a range of secure file transfer products; at the high end we are squarely in the enterprise space, where we apply the same philosophy – to win with performance, quality and by reducing the customer’s time to value and cost of ownership. We will never compete by having armies of sales and support engineers; we will succeed by making sure these armies are not needed. Instead, we will have highly skilled teams available for the times when enterprise customers need us for intensive assistance. If that happens too often, we will know something is broken; and we will fix it by applying what we learn from customers to make our software easier to learn and use. We will make it so customers need to call us less and can shift their attention to other pressing matters; in IT, there is never a shortage.

We have expanded beyond the small and medium business market, which we still consider our core strength.  Today, we also sell enterprise software to enterprises, but not by following the legacy vendors’ playbook of 20 years ago. The world has changed, and the lessons we have learned by selling to smaller businesses have served us well as enterprises discover our software.

19 years ago this past Sunday, I started Ipswitch with aspirations to have a real impact on IT, on the world, and how software companies achieve and measure success. I wanted to create an environment that would attract smart, ambitious people who share our values, which emphasize honesty, integrity and treating people with respect. I see our impact on IT every day in our many thousands of customers whose lives are made more productive by our software. As our iCare community program grows each year, I see more and more impact on volunteers and the communities that benefit from iCare. We fund iCare with 5% of profits. And I think we have shown that taking a longer term perspective on growth has allowed us to become a significant force in IT software while retaining control over our future. Change has accelerated, but it is still more important to identify long term trends than to react quickly.

In 1991, as we got started, it was much more about the potential of the Internet than the market for our initial products. I wanted to get going with a product – any product – that would establish us in the market. Once established, I thought we would be in a much better position to understand IT users’ needs and better able to decide what products to introduce.  And although that is in essence what happened, serendipity played a big role – Dan Lanciani pointed me to John Junod and the software that became WS_FTP, IMail and WhatsUp Gold.

During these 19 years, we have personally had some ups and downs. At the beginning, I was looking for a challenge, but four years into the tunnel and seeing no light, I considered giving up.  I decided to continue not because I knew there was a bright future, but because I hadn’t quite given it a complete effort and I felt that if I didn’t persist for a while longer I would regret it.  That’s when I met John and we found a path towards success.

The late 90′s were a period of excitement and fast growth. Then we slowed in the early 2000′s. It took several years for me to recognize that our prior success was a result of how we managed the company when we were much smaller, and that that approach no longer worked in a larger company. The strategic change I am most proud of is the one that we as a senior management team talked through for over a year before we reorganized Ipswitch into divisions almost three years ago. That one decision has had many profoundly positive effects that continue to this day. Without it, we would not have been prepared to expand by finding other companies for whom it made sense to become part of Ipswitch. We would not have been able to carry on so much parallel activity; we would not have the depth and breadth of management we do; and we would not have the range or quality of software solutions we do today.

Today, we are a major force in two big markets – secure file transfer and network management, with the exciting potential to increase our share and clout in both.  With our third division – messaging – we are in a competitive market where we stand out as a high quality product with superb support. Our potential exists because of our people, our customer base, our reputation, our brands and our technology. Our 19 years of continuous profit and growth, our stronger-than-ever market position and potential – this is all cause for giving thanks – to our customers, without whom we could not understand our markets or produce software for them; to our partners, who let us focus on what we are good at and rely on what they are good at; and to our employees, who inspire me and each other to continue to pursue our vision of building a software company that makes a difference for IT, for the world and sets an example for how software companies can achieve success.

Roger