ManageEngine looking to bring in AI/ML: Rajesh Ganesan

ManageEngine, a division of Zoho Corp.,  is at the forefront of technological evolution and its recent R&D initiatives. We are understanding customer needs at a regional level. We are incorporating AI into enterprise IT to derive unparalleled benefits. We are seeing lot of growth opportunities. 

Rajesh Ganesan, President, ManageEngine, provided an overview of ManageEngine’s growth trajectory and outlook for 2024. The company started 22 years ago, in 2002. Marketing has been all digital. We have 40+ products in ManageEngine. We target CIOs in organizations. Zoho provides business apps. CIO and others are looked after by ManageEngine. 

Bring in AI/ML

Going forward, we are looking to bring in AI/ML, etc. Barrier for entering new markets are no longer there. Businesses today need a hybrid infrastructure. We are looking to completely automotate all business processes. Technology infrastrunture should also support. A challenge remains cyber security and privacy. We are looking to provide greater and better experience to workforces. Every device and component should have the capability to detect any attack. We are putting in lot of investments in technology. 

ManageEngine has become a suite of products today. We are trying to serve problems of customers. It cuts lot of complexity for our customers. We have vertical- and industry-agnostic platform for customers. We are workforce of 4.500+. These are hosted in our data centers. When we started, IT-services management was the highest section. Now, it is the endpoint. We are trying to manage endpoints today. For example, banks in India need to comply with the endpoints. We are adding about 20,000 customers across the world over last year.

Customers in BFSI are looking to use AI for better experience. Same goes for pharma and manufacturing. They are all aligining with our roadmap. We started our AI research around 2011. AI/ML is already part of the ManageEngine platform. We started working on blockchain. Customers were not initially clear about their use cases. 

Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, Director of AI research, ManageEngine, said there was lack of trust need where blockchain comes in. Teams are currently working on cryptography. We are also looking at homomorphic encryption, etc.

Look at impact of AI

Shailesh Davey, Co-Founder and VP of Engineering, ManageEngine, Zoho Corp., said some technologies are AI/ML, IoT, 5G, cryptography, etc., are some leading technologies. We generally test everything at the customers ends. Technologies are visible in a variety of our products. You have seven-eight stages for app development. AI could play a role in coding. It can help you write more secure and intelligent code. You can also take the code to an LLM for explanation. AI can help with code development.

There is not a hype regarding AI, right now. We need to look at the impact of AI, and coding, on people. Coding takes about 30-40% of total work. We need to look at the bigger benefits. You can split up AI into three levels: classical ML, classical deep learning, and GenAI. GPT 3.5 had come up in Dec. 2022. We can now have SLM, MLM, and LLM, respectively. We also work at an affordable cost. Its a race today.

Today, the infrastructure cost is eating up a lot of money. As we make our platform more easily available, things will definitely change. Today, lot of companies are coming up with specific chips to accelerate AI. We are now looking at having good data. ManageEngine has also invested in robotics. We are currently working on software. Eg., Boson Motors, GenRobotics, etc. There is lot more investment in AI today.

We are also worknig on hardware, and that moves slowly. Storage is important for data centers. From an AI perspective, we are working with large players. We are now seeing brackets of tools where AI can be applied. There may be IT services maangement, etc. AI/ML is good in scenarios where there is large data used. 

BFSI is also growing in India. We have a highly regulated industry. India is ensuring we have a digital infrastructure in place. There is more focus on IT operations. Banks are now integrating APIs with small companies. We are seeing good growth in India, Middle East, South East Asia, and Latin America. 

We have data centers in Chennai and Mumbai. The later is colocated in Mumbai. We have data sovereignty. We have lot of BFSI customers who mandate data should be located in India. Slowdown leads to people being more value conscious. Today, there is lot more emphasis for serving local markets.

For R&D, we are looking at where we can apply AI in the enterprise. We have teams working on various things. Lot of data is stored on RDBMS. We are also looking at heterogenous integration. Lot of work needs to be done. We are also focusing on cryptography. According to him, AI data could be trained till, say 1920. Then, they can probably predict more. 

Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, Director of AI Research, ManageEngine said that we started by seeing how AI can be helpful for enterprises. 2015 saw our first AI/ML release. We then changed that to work with past data. We incurred a pattern to it. We then started forecasting, expecially, for IT and security. With classical DL era, we brought in better tools. We had bots, that gave answers to queries. 

We are now seeing contextual intelligence. We are seeing AI is being scoped today. At ManageEngine, we have AI integrated with the platform. AI is used largely for predictive analytics. Security has lot of traction, post pandemic. We are seeing that AI has gone up -- from market conversations to being heavily commoditized. Right now, we are working on our own foundational model. The idea is to build deep technical know-how. We may open that up as a separate entity. 

We are now moving from predictive to prescriptive. AI can give prescriptions for all the incidents. We are also sseeing scoped AI. We are able to deploy small, and narrow AI models.

India becoming more self-sufficient

Rajesh Ganesan, President, ManageEngine, added that there is need to make India more self-sufficient. Developing world is where we are seeing all the growth. But, developed regions are seeing slowdown. Decisions are now being made quickly. Today, India is on fire. We also see the pattern in Latin America, eg. Brazil, and Africe, eg., Nigeria and Kenya. They are now investing lot in infrastructure, both physical and digital. Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are also developing very quickly. 

Developed markets are currently having single-digit growth. However, developing markets are growing much faster. We are also seeing an uptick in the cloud models. Emerging economies can benefit from these. Today, North America contributes 35% of revenues, and remaining 65% comes from rest of the world. We have local teams across Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, etc.

In the emerging markets, we generally go with partners. Example, we have five solid distributors who have been partners for last 15 years. They are also moving to cloud. In Saudi Arabia, we have to comply with hiring 50% of local talent. We are hiring as per our norms. We have not seen lot of attrition. We hire people for what you need. We need to plan for the future. 

Arun Kumar, Regional Director, ManageEngine, said that ManageEngine initially started with lower digital initiatives. Today, we have lot of products. Expectations from customers are very different. They need procative experience, better customer experience, etc. We are also expanding locally in lot of markets. We are solving IT problems today. We have channel partners acrss the globe. 

We have probably doubled the count from sales perspective. Expansion happens on other streams as well, especially regional. From Inida perspective, growth has been around 50%. Cloud business is growing at 70%. We are on track to hit $1 billion revenue by 2026.

Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, Director of AI research, ManageEngine added that they are seeing AI agents being added. Human in the loop or hybrid can be the next big thing. We also have narrow or contextual intelligence in LLMs. AGI via LLM we are quite closer to that. Today, machines can also understand emotions.