“Why did you decide to return to Adaptiva™?” That is the question friends and colleagues have asked since I recently announced that I accepted Adaptiva’s offer to rejoin the company and lead the marketing organization as CMO. There are several factors that influence a career decision and when it comes to Adaptiva my choice focused on four key reasons:
1. The New Era of Autonomous Endpoint Management Is Happening Now—Gartner predicts that by 2027, AI- and ML-infused autonomous endpoint management (AEM) will reduce human effort by at least 40%. These AEM products will significantly improve IT efficiency, accelerate risk reduction, and improve the digital employee experience. Gartner also asserts that by 2025, more than 90% of organizations will use third-party patching tools to accelerate and automate their patching operations, which is a significant increase from fewer than 50% in 2023. These forecasts all point to one clear fact: enterprises need autonomous endpoint management and security solutions now to protect their organizations and maximize resources. That timing was a key reason in my decision to join the team that is delivering on that promise today.
Adaptiva is The Autonomous Endpoint Management Company. From day one, Adaptiva was founded with a vision to deliver elegant and effective endpoint configuration and management solutions that exceed the expectations of customers. The company does this by automating the most challenging daily tasks of IT and cybersecurity leaders, such as managing the continuous delivery of software, patches, and vulnerability remediations at scale. Today, the market is fully embracing that vision and an entirely new market of autonomous endpoint management (AEM) tools has arrived.
2. IT & Security Leaders Need Platforms That Help Them Rapidly Adapt to Ever-Changing Conditions—Albert Einstein once said that "The measure of intelligence is the ability to change." When it comes to endpoint management and security these days, change is the only constant. With new security threats emerging daily and zero-day attacks increasingly taking advantage of unfixed security vulnerabilities, IT and security leaders must continuously adapt to changing conditions. In fact, management consulting firm McKinsey & Company believes this ability to adapt to the volatile and unforeseen conditions that rapidly emerge in today’s world can be the difference maker for why some people thrive in their jobs and others fail.The hard truth is that in the endpoint management and patching landscape today IT and security leaders are not adapting fast enough when it comes to preventing threats and mitigating vulnerabilities. Adaptiva’s recent report produced with the Ponemon Institute on “The State of Patch Management in the Digital Workplace” found that 59% of IT leaders say it takes at least two weeks to begin deployment after a patch has been released. And only 34% can reliably confirm that a deployed patch has been installed on the appropriate devices. Those numbers are evidence that IT teams cannot act quickly enough with their current solutions—leaving a wide window of opportunity for hackers to cause millions of dollars in damage with each breach. Organizations need tools with the adaptive intelligence to flexibly align to their unique business strategies and processes. Additionally, they need to automate the deluge of endpoint management tasks to accelerate operational efficiency and reduce risk.
Adaptiva’s OneSite platform was first created nearly two decades ago with this adaptive mindset. Adaptiva’s founder and chief executive officer, Deepak Kumar said: “Humans should define strategy and process and software should do the rest.” He and the team have built the OneSite platform and suite of products that fully adapt to meet the customer’s endpoint management and security needs. Adaptiva’s products enable customers to model their exact processes and then take a hands-free, set-it-and-forget-it approach to maximize patching and software distribution velocity. The result is that Adaptiva delivers the fastest way to patch and manage endpoints at scale and that brand promise is something I look forward to spotlighting in 2024 and beyond.
3. Winning Organizations Display an Unwavering Commitment to Customer Satisfaction—Hundreds of the world’s largest companies, including major global banks, retailers, and government organizations trust Adaptiva for their endpoint management needs. One of the reasons the company has secured and maintained its impressive customer base, including names like FedEx, the U.S. Army, and Hertz, and currently managed over 10 million endpoint devices for many of today’s largest Global 2000 organizations is its approach to customer service. This commitment to listening and rapidly responding, one-to-one, to customers’ needs has truly differentiated Adaptiva in the market. It is the reason why we reported 100% customer satisfaction rates for 63 consecutive months and counting. While our competitors send customers to outsourced call centers or often charge for personalized support, Adaptiva views customer satisfaction as an intrinsic part of the product, not an add-on we sell. That customer-first, service-oriented mentality is a philosophy that aligns with my personal brand and is a key reason I chose to return.
4. The Opportunity to Do My Best Work—One of my favorite research studies on the topic of careers came from Marcus Buckingham, a global researcher and New York Times best-selling author whose studies focused on unlocking strengths, increasing performance, and pioneering the future of how people work. He and his colleagues surveyed employees for 25 years to figure out what factors predict extraordinary performance. They found that the most important predictor of the success of a company or division was how many people answered 'yes' to the question, 'Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?'
From the outset, Adaptiva was devoted to fostering a culture of innovation, where a collaborative environment is the bedrock upon which employees can do their best work. That feeling of empowerment was something I experienced during my previous employment at Adaptiva and I will continue to embrace it as I lead the Marketing team to do our best work in 2024 and beyond. As Adaptiva speeds ahead into the new year, I look forward to once again collaborating with Adaptiva’s customers, partners, and technology community, so please drop me a line if you’d like to connect or check out our Careers page if you are interested in joining the Adaptiva team.
