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Arora bats for flexibility in understanding how cloud companies operate and deploy cloud-based solutions in India’s national infrastructure.
With digital transformation and adoption a top priority for businesses in the post-pandemic global era, security risks have taken center stage. To address some of the cybersecurity issues around the world and a host of other economic issues strangling the global economy, CNBC-TV18 Editor-in-Chief Shereen Bhan sat down with the chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks for a candid conversation.
In the conversation, Nikesh Arora decoded the key challenges that an imminent recession could pose against mitigating cybersecurity risks, the financial implications of the current economic scenario on corporate balance sheets, the depth of entrepreneurship in India, and the opportunities ahead for Palo Alto Networks.
Arora said becoming a technology-reliant society means cybersecurity is among the biggest risks anyone brings to the business, and it comes with its own set of cracks that need to be patched. He doesn’t think companies will change their priority in technology adoption, which includes cybersecurity.
“If the shock to the system is large enough and long-lasting, we will see trimming at the edges, and that trimming will affect some of your spending, whether it’s technology or cybersecurity,” Arora said.
He believes we are seeing a re-reading of valuations in the market around the world, and we are back to a scenario where people have to manage risk and execution, which is now putting values at a certain stage.
If you’re lucky enough to have taken advantage of that opportunity, saved a lot of money, and kept an eye on your balance for a rainy day, you’re in good shape. If you didn’t, all you did was eat a very large meal, which led to indigestion, Arora said.
While optimistic about India’s entrepreneurial opportunities, Arora thinks the country hasn’t seen the cycles yet. The cycle is when you get into a new exit, we see a lot of investment and a lot of margins, but India hasn’t seen a lot of exits. All exits are either strategic buyers buying assets or several ideas. And there are many more unicorns that need to enter that cycle.
The former head of Softbank thinks that many of India’s unicorns are robust businesses; they can survive a downturn or a cold winter in the next few years, where they either have to raise money at a lower value than they did last time. Going forward, people will have a healthy need to concentrate on profit and cash flow.
For his window of opportunity for Palo Alto Networks, Arora said that customers want someone to provide a much more comprehensive platform with a solution-first perspective, which the company has done for the past four years, and now that opportunity has expanded. “Cybersecurity is being looked at in a light given the technological reliance and acceleration we’ve seen in the pandemic.”
Arora said that provisioning a new network architecture is the hottest thing today as every company undergoes a cloud transformation. It requires you to provide a new way. Palo Alto Networks is one of the few companies with this capability.
He is very impressed with the technological evolution that India has been doing in the last few years; especially with some of the business going on in the world-class financial services sectors; the way the infrastructure is built, the way the different startups are encouraged and the fact that everyone is very aware that they have to build it in a robust and secure way.
He believes that if we can be more cloud-aware, it can leapfrog the technology revolution in a way where we’re actually a cloud-first country, it also requires regulators to be more progressive from a cloud-thinking perspective, but if we can do that, I don’t think they will stop us there.
According to Arora, a deterrent to cloud adoption is that there is a degree of apprehension around the world to release all data into the cloud. This is because cloud companies are primarily foreign companies; many national data requirements insist that you compile all data in one place, in one country.
He is looking for the flexibility to understand how cloud companies operate and to be comfortable deploying cloud-based solutions across our national infrastructure. India can leapfrog if we build understanding capabilities.
From a development perspective, Arora sees a huge opportunity to provide infrastructure in the country and infrastructure for thousands of businesses. “We want innovation to happen in India and we want that innovation to be delivered globally and domestically.”
This is a partner post
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