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Digital Influencer Otto Berkes: From Xbox To The Enterprise

This article is more than 8 years old.

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.”

Berkes’ success with Xbox led to additional work on the next hardware platform to catch Microsoft’s eye: tablets. Unfortunately, its Ultra Mobile PCs proved to be ahead of the market, and at that point he realized it was time to move on. “It’s unfortunate you can’t repeat that experiment," Berkes said at the time – but emphasized the positive. “One of the outcomes of that effort was a change in thinking around Windows and the PC and touch interfaces and hardware evolution.”

Challenges Digitally Transforming HBO

In 2011 Berkes left Microsoft. “I was looking for the next big thing, an industry-wide sea change I could be a part of,” he reports. His choice: HBO, a division of Time Warner .

Time Warner recruited him because of the early successes Netflix was having with its streaming video offering. “Netflix was still in its infancy,” Berkes says. “Time Warner was aware of it and the entire media industry had to respond to it. They hired me to build a competitive, large-scale video streaming service.”

As it turned out, Berkes’ timing was perfect, as streaming video hit an inflection point at that time. After two years running the team that was implementing the HBO GO streaming service, he was promoted to CTO. “I ended up running HBO’s entire technology stack,” he reports.

It was at HBO, in fact, that Berkes learned the most important lesson about digital transformation: that it’s more about organizational than technological change.

HBO had essentially been a traditional, content-driven media business, while Berkes spearheaded its transformation into a software-driven organization. “We brought the vernacular of software development into the vocabulary of the business,” Berkes explains. “Part of my job was to educate colleagues about opportunities to do things differently using software and digital technologies.”

Nevertheless, corporate politics led to roadblocks and internal squabbles, especially at the Seattle software development center that Berkes founded. In 2014, HBO management decided to overrule Berkes’ technology strategy. “When HBO’s strategy for GO shifted to an approach that wouldn’t take advantage of my full capabilities,” Berkes admits, “It opened the door for me to move on.”

CA Technologies: Digital Transformation at Scale

After pioneering well-known consumer brands like Xbox and HBO GO, the move to CA might seem to be a step backward – but not for Berkes. “I’m not a gamer or a big TV watcher,” he quips. “Software development is not a glamorous thing when you take away the brand. The work requires the same discipline.”

The fact that CA was undergoing its own transformation, in fact, was a challenge that appealed to Berkes. “CA offered an interesting business challenge,” Berkes said. “Would I be able to move the needle on the business?”

The reality that mainframes were still at the core of CA’s business was actually a positive for Berkes. “CA has an incredible core business in mainframes,” he says. “The mainframe is still a core component of many enterprises, but things are moving quickly.”

As I’ve written about before, mainframes drive digital efforts at the companies that depend upon them – but the entire technology context for mainframes is shifting, both for CA as well as for its customers. “It’s going to be a very different ecosystem,” Berkes points out. “The technology stack will be radically different over the next five to ten years.”

There are two sides to this story, as Berkes is referring to is both the enterprise technology stack as well as CA’s. Berkes is hoping to move both forward. “Any software development at scale is really difficult,” Berkes admits, “And it needs to be less so” – an opportunity for a software tooling vendor like CA.

Furthermore, Berkes is leveraging his experience at HBO for the benefit of both CA and its customers. “The opportunity at CA is to help companies address the types of challenges I helped HBO through – and to do it at scale,” Berkes reports.

In particular, he now has new insight into – and empathy for – enterprises as they undergo digital transformation. “My experience at HBO was frankly an eye-opener,” Berkes says. “How difficult creating a digital competency can be at a non-technology company. It was a fantastic grounding for me. I’m now conversant with customers at non-technology companies, with more empathy.”

Every large software vendor is going through its own turbulent transformation. Some will succeed, but many will not. The fact that CA Technologies’ technology leader possesses hard-won empathy for the challenges customers face as they become software-driven organizations bodes well for its future.

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.

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