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| Home - CEO Spotlight - Dec 03 Issue |
CEO Spotlight: Peter Gyenes, Ascential Software Corporation
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Angel Mehta: When you talk about data integration, are you positioning yourself against the WebMethods and Tibcos of the world?
Peter Gyenes: No, not at all. Tibco and WebMethods are companies that offer enterprise application integration (EAI) solutions. Our data integration platform complements and in fact enhances EAI offerings. Application integration solutions were designed to allow organizations to bring together a group of loosely connected applications to support a common business process, but EAI doesn’t have the capabilities to bring together large volumes of disparate data, transform them into the required form and deliver it for its intended use. This requires different technology than EAI. It requires data integration, designed to bring together the data associated with a collection of applications in support of a common view of the business, for example creating a 360 degree view of a customer, of a supply chain, of a business operation.
Our solution enables data to be integrated within any form of business process in the enterprise, interoperating with whatever existing applications, systems and platforms may already be deployed, and therefore complementing other integration technologies such as EAI.
The fact is that successful enterprise integration depends upon data integration, having the right data, in the right place, at the right time, and in the right form for its intended use.
Angel Mehta: Let’s talk about Ardent Software and the decision to sell it to Informix. What were the original objectives of that transaction? Was it successful?
Peter Gyenes: No, it wasn’t. Informix’s strategy was e-business software infrastructure, that is to have been the premier vendor of software infrastructure for the Internet environment. Informix was a $900+ million dollar company, very well known, with significant customers, a great database product and data management technology. The data integration technology of Ardent was considered critical to the Informix strategy. At the same time, the position and resources of Informix was a perfect complement to accelerate our strategy at Ardent. The combined company, at a size of close to $1B with thousands of enterprise-scale customers and significant distribution around the world, also had the accumulation of technology and resources to have strongly differentiated offerings that would drive growth. Strategically, selling the company to Informix was the right thing to do. But the implementation failed.
Angel Mehta: That’s usually where M&A falls down…what were the integration problems with Ardent and Informix (no pun intended)?
Peter Gyenes: It was a leadership issue, pure and simple. There had been an integration plan developed which, if implemented and executed well, would have achieved the goals of the combination and would have produced results in line with the expectations we all had and had set at the time. Unfortunately, management allowed “us vs. them” sentiments to flourish and did not create sufficient focus nor accountability to make the integration plan happen. Consequently, results missed expectations and energy turned to finger-pointing rather than teamwork and execution of the strategy.
After a couple of quarters of results falling short of expectations and forecasts, it became apparent that the atmosphere in and around the company was becoming troubled and confused. The Board of Directors of Informix decided to make a change and asked me to step back in, now as CEO of the combined company. Although we rapidly stabilized the company and returned it to profitability, the challenges of growth in the core data base business of Informix in light of the strong positions of Oracle and IBM and Microsoft led to the sale of that business to IBM for $1 billion in cash in July 2001.
We then renamed the company Ascential Software and focused exclusively on expanding our product set and overall footprint in data integration. So in the 2 ½ years since, we’ve more than doubled the run-rate of our revenues, achieved profitability, doubled our customer base, reduced our shares outstanding by 20%, expanded our product line to create what is now the industry’s most complete and scalable software platform for data integration infrastructure, and have developed ourselves to be the largest independent software company in our market segment.
Angel Mehta: What have some of the more significant personal challenges in your life been?
Peter Gyenes: I’d say that trying to balance participating more in the lives of my children with my workaholic tendencies has been very challenging for me. It’s clearer to me now than it was at the time that I really could have participated more without slowing down any of my business activities. I just think I didn’t pay enough attention. I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve been married to the same woman for 33 years and we have two great daughters and now 2 great sons-in-law. We also have an 18-month-old grandson and another grandchild on the way. So I have a great family, but I’ve traveled constantly and been a workaholic forever. When I look back on it I can think of many times when I should have and could have found a way to be more a part of the life of my kids but I don’t think I tried hard enough.
Angel Mehta: How many hours a week do you work now?
Peter Gyenes: Probably 70 to 80, including weekends.
Angel Mehta: So what advice would you have for other CEO’s that are struggling with challenges of work/life balance?
Peter Gyenes: I would say it this way: I can think of times when I could have accomplished what I wanted to accomplish, and did, at work and in business, yet still have found a way to spend time with my kids on a Sunday afternoon or a Tuesday night. Again, this is hindsight. But what I tell people now is that it’s not a matter of balance – it’s a matter of management. If you’re really serious about being a leader of a company, you have to live that leadership 100% of the time. It’s not possible to tune out for three weeks at a time. It’s not possible to tune out from 5:00pm on Friday to 9:00am on Monday morning. But it is possible to not be in the office or on email or on conference calls all that time. You can find ways to integrate the two responsibilities of home and family. Of course, you’ve got to be living your leadership responsibility all the time – but you can indeed manage it in the context of the other things that are also important to you and that demand some of your time and attention.
Again, this is all clearer to me now then it was 20 years ago….
Angel Mehta: It always is…
Peter Gyenes is the chairman and chief executive officer of Ascential Software Corporation. Peter was formerly CEO of Informix Corporation and led the transition from Informix to Ascential. Prior to Informix's acquisition of Ardent Software, Inc., he was chairman, president and CEO of Ardent, which he joined in 1996 after the company was formed through the merger of V-Mark and UniData. Feedback on the interview can be sent to: peter.gyenes@ascential.com
Angel Mehta is Managing Director at Sterling-Hoffman, a retained executive search firm focused on VP Sales, VP Marketing, and CEO searches for enterprise software companies. He can be reached for feedback at: amehta@sterlinghoffman.net
 
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