“The No. 1 thing we focused on is business continuity when everyone works from home...at the end of the day our lifeblood is our people. We put a lot of thought into being productive," he said during a virtual event titled Resilient Leadership in Challenging Times, organised as part of the Trans-Tasman Business Circle Series.
Transparent communications with employees is also essential. Palo Alto Networks promised their workforce that there would be no layoffs because of COVID, Arora said. “We are reallocating people, training them, we promised them we're not going to use this pandemic to reduce our workforce,” he said.
Senior executives at the company contributed to a fund to help employees facing hardship, and giving back to the community is also part of the picture, he said. “We're trying to take the uncertainty away,” he said.
Looking after employees is key, Arora added. “In uncertain times people do their worst work.. they get anxious, they get distracted,” he said. “We can be the pillar, the anchor for them. It's the right thing to do.”
Arora observes two trends in security,
the first being that companies are going to the cloud. “We expect
that the cloud transformation will accelerate as people are realising
they can't scale their business right now... We think they are going
to consolidate their spend on better brands and platforms.”
More consolidated platform-like solutions are going to be in demand, he predicted. “We see ourselves as a consolidated platform company so hopefully we should weather the storm,” he said. “We are doubling down on product development. We are planning more money and more resources to deliver on these trends.”
“Once you don't innovate, there will be a new generation of companies which innovate and take your place,” he warned.
Remote working is the second trend, he said. “We are going to be videoconferencing for a long time. Thankfully the world has enough bandwidth to make that happen," he said.
“The biggest thing you can do is to have a remote security capability that allows you to scale to the size of your organisation. Make sure you have a solution that is robust, that will pass the test of time and the test of hackers.”
Palo Alto Networks plans to invest during this crisis while protecting jobs. Arora noted that the strategy will allow the company “to leapfrog many of our competitors who don't have the balance sheet strength”.
“A lot of the smaller businesses who will get impacted...don't have the balance sheet capacity,” he said. “It'll separate the wheat from the chaff, and winners from the losers.”
*A black swan event is one for which the outcomes are unpredictable.
More consolidated platform-like solutions are going to be in demand, he predicted. “We see ourselves as a consolidated platform company so hopefully we should weather the storm,” he said. “We are doubling down on product development. We are planning more money and more resources to deliver on these trends.”
“Once you don't innovate, there will be a new generation of companies which innovate and take your place,” he warned.
Remote working is the second trend, he said. “We are going to be videoconferencing for a long time. Thankfully the world has enough bandwidth to make that happen," he said.
“The biggest thing you can do is to have a remote security capability that allows you to scale to the size of your organisation. Make sure you have a solution that is robust, that will pass the test of time and the test of hackers.”
Palo Alto Networks plans to invest during this crisis while protecting jobs. Arora noted that the strategy will allow the company “to leapfrog many of our competitors who don't have the balance sheet strength”.
“A lot of the smaller businesses who will get impacted...don't have the balance sheet capacity,” he said. “It'll separate the wheat from the chaff, and winners from the losers.”
*A black swan event is one for which the outcomes are unpredictable.
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