Ivanti establishes India as its innovation centre and announces large hiring initiative

As part of Cybersecurity Awareness Company Partners with Cyber Security Centre of Excellence and Centre for Cyber Security Works for India’s largest Hackathon

Hyderabad, October 22 2021: Ivanti, the automation platform that discovers, manages, secures, and services IT assets from cloud to edge, today announced ramping up hiring over the next two years and reaffirmed the company’s commitment to investing in Indian talent, tech and innovation. Ivanti acquired three companies in the last year with a strong Indian presence (Mobile Iron, Pulse Secure and Risk Sense) and is now executing its plan, One Ivanti India, to establish the region as its innovation centre. The R&D coming from Ivanti’s India office will be instrumental in the continued growth of the company and will serve Ivanti’s global customers with security, ITSM and UEM solutions.

The government announced enhanced security initiatives, in alignment with Cyber security Awareness Month, that will address increasing cyber threats across public institutions and private organizations. Committed to its core philosophy, Ivanti is co-engaging with the Government of Telangana, Cyber Security Centre of Excellence and Cyber Security Works to make the ecosystem secure in the post COVID paradigm of work from anywhere. Ivanti will support measures taken by the government to create a safe zone for ‘Everywhere Workplace’.

Chief Guest at the event was Shri K T Rama Rao, Hon’ble Minister of Municipal Administration and Urban Development, Industries & Commerce, and Information Technology, Government of Telangana. Hewas accompanied by Shri Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary of the Industries & Commerce (I&C) and Information Technology (IT) Departments, Government of Telangana; Dr Sriram Birudavolu, CEO, Cyber Security Centre of Excellence; and Dr. Ram Movva, Chairman & Co-founder, Cyber Security Works. Senior executives from Ivanti: Nayaki Nayyar President, Service Management Solutions Group and Chief Product Officer and Srinivas Mukkamala, Sr. Vice President of Security Products were among those present.

Speaking at the event, Shri KT Rama Rao, Hon’ble Minister of Municipal Administration and Urban Development, Industries & Commerce, and Information Technology, Government of Telangana said, “Hyderabad is a favored destination for leading tech companies, and Ivanti is one of them. Cyber Security and Data Privacy are serious issues for the world today, and Ivanti is poised to play a significant role in that. Hyderabad being one of the highest software exporters in the country, I am optimistic that the company will expand its operations and generate employment. Currently their objective is to target three times growth in recruitment from 700 to 2100. We want our engineers to continue producing products and solutions for the global market. I welcome Ivanti to the city. In today’s world where your phone talks to your refrigerator, which also talks to car, that can talk to your washing machine, we live in this interesting world of Internet of Things where each device by itself can start talking to the other, without any sort of human intervention, I think we are headed there pretty much. It is both exciting and also bit scary if you think about it, one of the things I watched on OTT was scary, where there are devices which can apparently start building on your behavior, building on your thinking, on your speech pretty much and even can possibly read and predict what you will be doing next, which is scary. The pandemic has opened our eyes to the possibilities of how we can live, work, co-exist with each other even in a virtual world. Initially when Covid hit us none of were really sure on how to handle it and when we started working from home and realized the reliability of networks and broadbands we use is quite decent and we can definitely give the output that is required. The fact is as we become more and more reliable on broadbands and networks, security becomes a huge challenge for enterprises, for Governments, institutions. I was told that 200 million devices are protected by Ivanti’s software from malware, these are scary numbers, because as you know, as politicians our phones are constantly looked into, wanting to know exactly what my political strategies are in winning elections, in contesting, competing. So, we are obviously constantly paranoid, constantly looking over shoulders to see what’s happening, who is doing what at my phone etc. Thanks for giving that confidence that you can protect my two devices, they become hack proof, I doubt it though, nevertheless. In this state we came out with our cyber security policy long time back, in 2016. When we were trying to see how we could develop an ecosystem, which will create more entrepreneurs, cyber warriors, ensure that our devices, enterprises, our knowledge, our IP is kept secret, we never thought we will run into a situation where we would be caught in a pandemic where everything will go virtual. Today if you look around, we have shown the world that functioning even in adverse circumstances like Covid has been quite easy and I am confident that with the kind of experiences we have, the kind of software solutions we have that Ivanti and others produce from our state, our country, we can give the confidence to investors who are coming in from various parts of the world. We have some of the best technology companies in the world, they all made Hyderabad their home. If you look at the top five most valued Tech companies all five of them without exception have made Hyderabad their second largest base outside their headquarters, the Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, Novartis, the list goes on, made Hyderabad their destination for research and development. What’s exciting is, Hyderabad is no more the back office, we take the pride in providing amazing talent pool, amazing think force, which can innovate, come out with world class solutions and give solutions to the rest of the world as well. You said Ivanti will grow to 2000, I hope 1000 will be based in Hyderabad out of those 2000. We will do everything from our side to ensure that your operations grow here, and you hit that magic 1000 figure ASAP. The Government wants to be a part of the hackathon with 1000 youngsters you are hosting, we want to be part of it and want to initiate it and bring in more and more people into it. Because crime is also changing, crime is no more few thugs in the street, crime has changed its form, Cybercrime has become more and more dangerous and prevalent. Telangana infact will be the first state in the country to draft its own legislation on cybercrime and we are drafting it at NALSAR and we will be happy to share it draft legislation with you, possibly you can advise us, because you seem to know lot of what goes on in USA, homeland security and other institutions which are far more experienced, please advise us, guide us. Once we understand how to enforce it, how to prevent cybercrime from happening, we would again become a pioneer in the entire country. Because as I know, recently when the IT standing committee of parliamentarian visited Hyderabad, they told me there is no national cybercrime legislation policy. Possibly Telangana’s policy will become the beacon light for the rest of the country. Therefore, more and more inputs coming from you will really help all of us. Also tell us how we can build a more robust ecosystem of more and more enterprises in this space making Hyderabad their home. We look forward to working closely with you to understand this ever-changing dynamic technological challenge we face.   

According to Shri Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary of the Industries & Commerce (I&C) and Information Technology (IT) Departments, Government of Telangana, “Covid has hastened the pace of digital transformation and has created challenges for businesses across the world. India has been in the forefront of a digital adoption. However, the transformation has brought about its own challenges through escalated cyber threats. Zero tolerance towards cyber breaches is the new mantra of our government. To this end, we look forward to companies such as Ivanti that have set up base to work on creating a safe and secure business environment.”

“I am grateful to Shri KT Rama Rao for being present amongst us today. Hyderabad is a wonderful city besides being the hub of employable tech talent. Ivanti mission of Everywhere Workplace will be possible only if companies invest in innovative cyber security technologies. We would like to leverage the talent available in this city to build world class cyber security products and solutions.  Ivanti aims to be the largest cyber security product company in Hyderabad,” said Nayaki Nayyar, President, Service Management Solutions Group and Chief Product Officer, Ivanti. Today Ivanti is among top 3 software companies globally in unified end point management, in IT services management and most importantly in cybersecurity. Ivanati is in a very unique position with the growth acquisitions we have done to be able to provide that level of service for all of our customers. Today we have over 46000 customers worldwide and are proud that 96% of the fortune 100 companies are our customers and we help manage and secure 200mn devices worldwide that’s a massive scale as growth. I also like to take this opportunity to announce our commitment to India, to Telangana and to Hyderabad, as the location for innovation. Today we have 500+ employees in our India offices and plan to grow this upto 2000+ employees around all the India offices and most importantly here in Hyderabad, we plan on doubling or tripling our employee base for driving innovation and growth, specially in the cybersecurity space.

Dr Sriram Birudavolu, CEO of Cyber Centre of Excellence opined, “October being the month for cyber security awareness, we decided to use it as an opportunity to educate people about being cyber savvy to avoid pitfalls and become a victim of cyber threats. To further our agenda, we are partnering with Ivanti and Cyber Security Works in November to conduct the India’s largest hackathon that will showcase the best minds in this space.”

Speaking at the celebratory event, Srinivas Mukkamala, Sr. Vice President of Security Products, Ivanti said, “We have plans to hire aggressively over the next 6 months and will double our current employee strength over the next two years. Our Hyderabad operation is slated to be the largest in India. With changing work dynamics due to COVID, our products and solutions will ensure Everywhere Workplace for organizations that want to protect their data and businesses from cyber threats. As you all know probably India is one of the largest knowledge-based economies in the world and it has the youngest population that the world desires, we run every critical system in the world. If you look at our IT Minister today, he has attracted every single CEO to come to Hyderabad, set up innovation, not to set up a shop, but to set up innovation. There is a difference, everybody come to India for people, to make you work, but very few people come and say I am going to set up an innovation n center. Look at Microsoft, Google, Apple, including Ivanti, what we are looking at, we are inspired by what the minister has done, it is really important for the leaders to lay the path and that’s where founder CEO will get inspired. I told my team we got go to Hyderabad and launch Ivanti, because we haven’t launched Ivanti formally in India. It was a very conscious decision to look at Hyderabad. We are the largest mobile security company in the world, protecting millions and millions of mobile devices across the globe, that innovation, that code was actually built here.”

Dr Ram Movva, Chairman & Co-founder, Cyber Security Works (CSW) mentioned, “Telangana Government has always supported startups which have benefited immensely due to special incentives. Since the last decade CSW has worked with the Government to create an ecosystem for founders of fledgling businesses. We will continue to support the government’s initiatives and reinforce Hyderabad as a technology hub and a talent powerhouse of the world”.