Welcome to the first in a series of articles featuring digital influencers who are driving digital transformation for enterprises across the globe. Today’s influencer: Otto Berkes, CTO of enterprise software stalwart CA Technologies.
As my article on CA from a few months ago explained, Berkes is one of the drivers of CA’s own transformation – but that fact alone doesn’t qualify him as a digital influencer. In fact, Berkes brings some serious digital cred to the table, as one of the founders of Microsoft’s Xbox video game empire as well as a progenitor of the HBO GO streaming video service.
Following Berkes’ path from Microsoft to HBO and on to CA provides a fascinating study in how to build digital influence among today’s software-driven enterprises.
From Enterprise Tech to Video Games
Perhaps the most incongruous move in Berkes’ storied career was the abrupt leap from videogames and online video to enterprise software – but in fact, the enterprise was his original focus. “I joined the Windows NT effort, which was Microsoft’s first enterprise software system,” Berkes explains.
Windows NT was Microsoft’s original foray into the enterprise back office – and it has been one of the leaders there ever since. Soon, however, Berkes shifted to enterprise-focused graphics technology, joining Microsoft’s Open Graphics Library (OpenGL) team.
OpenGL was an enterprise workstation graphics technology from the market leader at the time, Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI). Berkes drove Microsoft’s workstation graphics technology by leveraging OpenGL, thus competing with SGI – and not coincidentally, the original SGI is now relegated to the tech history books.
Even though Windows NT and hardware-accelerated workstation graphics both serve enterprises, it was such technologies’ transformative nature that Berkes found particularly exciting. “The common thread is software and the power of software to create new industries and transform existing ones,” Berkes reports.
As hardware prices dropped (as they always do), Berkes saw a consumer-focused opportunity. “Workstation graphics were available at consumer price points,” Berkes says. “Putting consumer graphics into Windows gave birth to Xbox.”
Not that Xbox ran Windows at that time, however – rather, launching a hardware platform solved one of Windows’ most difficult challenges. “Achieving a 100% repeatable user experience on all implementations drove the decision to get into the hardware business in a big way.”
Read the entire article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2016/01/07/digital-influencer-otto-berkes-from-xbox-to-the-enterprise/.
Intellyx advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, CA Technologies is an Intellyx customer. No other organization mentioned in this article is an Intellyx customer. Image credit: CA Technologies.
