‘Insane’ acquisition spree and Blue Coat’s renaissance: Page 2 of 2

Asian ambitions
 
Blue Coat’s mobile security offerings have also helped the company in its foothold in Asia, with Thompson saying that there is a lot of pioneering work taking place in the region around mobility and mobile workers.
 
“We’ve always had a presence in the region, with a healthy business especially in the government and financial sectors.
 
“About two-and-a-half years ago, we made a big bet on the region, and this saw me move to Singapore for six months to help grow out our operations,” he said.
 
Thompson said that a lot of energy has been put into the Asia Pacific region, and the company has managed to build out a strong presence in Japan, Australia and India.
 
“When we began our renewed efforts in the region, India was one of three focus countries. It is an interesting market as it is very price-sensitive, and enterprise customers want to take whatever tech you have and use it at maximum utility versus at 50% utility.
 
“To date, we’ve been exceptionally successful, to the point where we’ve actually displaced the incumbent competition, notably WebSense which enjoyed a significant share in the Indian market,” he claimed.
 
Thompson also described the company’s growth in the Asean (Association of South-East Asian Nations) region as “unbelievable.”
 
The company currently has over 30 people in its Singapore office, and its Kuala Lumpur operations currently has a staff strength of 60 and targets to increase that to 100.
 
One particular vertical in Asia that has Thompson quite excited is the telecommunications space, which he said was generally more willing to take risks versus other regions such as North America or Europe.
 
“Some really forward-thinking stuff is happening here. If you look at telcos in highly-developed markets like the United States and parts of Europe, they are much more slow-moving, which makes sense as they have massive infrastructure and a lot of pre-deployed capital.
 
“There’s an increase in willingness in Asia Pacific for folks to think differently about how to do things, and that’s really exciting as in some cases, they don’t have the infrastructure built out and have the opportunity to [play to] today’s set realities instead of yesterday’s,” he added.
 
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