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The mark of a CEO

Anil Menon, CEO, Secure Synergy, reveals to Chirasrota Jena the qualities that make a chief executive successful.

Perseverance, strong management skills, confidence and continuous focus on work have made Anil Menon a successful CEO at Secure Synergy. He is responsible for the overall business operations, including sales, marketing and consulting. Menon has been associated with the company from its inception and has conceptualised every strategy for the organisation.

With an experience of more than 14 years in the field of marketing, channel operations and business development, Menon is a known name in the industry. He is often invited by various associations to deliver lectures in technology conferences. He is a founding member of the Forum of ASPs in India (FASPIN).

Menon did his engineering in Electronics and Telecommunications from the College of Engineering, Trivandrum in 1990. He then completed his management education. He started his career with Fujitsu as a Business Manager handling its Indian subsidiary. He later shifted to Sun Microsystems to handle their channel operations.

At Sun Microsystems, Menon contributed towards the successful management of channel partners and also worked for the marketing team. He was also associated with the nation’s highest level scientific establishments, including India’s prestigious super computer project—PARAM 10000. India’s largest computer system at 100 GFlops, he was involved right from the design stage, systems architecture and product management efforts.

In 1999, Menon joined Citrix India and has established the company here. As its first employee in India he has contributed a lot towards development of its overall business across South Asia. He joined as the Director Marketing, Citrix India, and was later promoted to the position of Director, Business Development, Citrix Systems.

“By maintaining a balance between my professional and personal life I have achieved great success. This apart, the acquisition of Powertel Boca by Citrix during my stint is also a notable achievement in my life,” states Menon. He wants to use his rich experience to nurture talent in his organisation.

Secure Synergy was established in 2002. Menon reveals the reason for setting up the organisation, “We want to provide cost-effective, flexible, scalable and highly available information technology resources designed ground up with security in mind. We emphasise on management and operations controlled security along with the conventional technical controls that networks rely on. The aim of our company is to provide superior value to its clients through quality service, innovation, continuous improvement and strategic alliances with technology partners and reseller channel partners.”

He has taken a pioneering role in expanding the reach of Secure Synergy to other countries in the Middle East and other Asian nations.

The BS 7799 certification received by Synergy Secure is a memorable moment in his life.

Giving lectures at seminars and conferences is a passion for him.

While discussing the security market, he says, “The security market is shifting from point security to infrastructure security. Certain amount of consolidation is required to get high return on investment (RoI). Corporate governance, risk management, compliance and infrastructure RoI issues continue to impact and challenge the industry. Specialised domain experience has enabled us to keep up with the latest developments in the concerned domain, such as competitive environment, government initiatives and technological innovations.”

Menon has an active interest in international and national politics and is a great fan of Hindi movies. Menon likes to play and also watch cricket and tennis. “At some point of time I would like to go back to Kerala as it is my native place,” he says.