Techno maestro

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With record revenues and more financial institutions than ever looking to better handle their risk management, US software maker Sybase is bucking the trend during the global downturn. Claire Ferris-Lay talks to the CEO, John Chen.

John Chen has tried and tested most mobile phones on the market. While it's not unusual for the latest phone to tempt people away from their favourite handheld device, the difference with the CEO of Sybase is that he still uses them all.

"I once ran into the chairman of Ericsson and the first thing he asked me was what phone I was using. At the time I was using another [brand] and he said to me ‘you want me to buy your stuff and you don't use my phone'... so now I carry the phone of anyone I want to sell to," he laughs.

He quickly adds that he doesn't have a favourite brand. His diplomacy or at least his persistence should be commended. Despite the global economic downturn, Sybase, a global enterprise software and services company based in the US, recorded its most successful quarter ever and its biggest yearly profits, topping the $1bn revenue mark, in January.

With an increase in financial institutions looking to better manage their risk and a lack of infrastructure across the world forcing many banks to utilise fourth generation mobile phone technology for bill payments, Chen remains bullish on the year ahead.

"We are fortunate," he smiles. "We are in a position where we are doing well in the fundamental business itself and we are doing well pretty much all around the world in terms of generating interest. We are hiring people, stocks have retained high values and we are buying companies."

Total revenue for the fourth quarter increased by three percent, full year revenue increased by ten percent compared to the previous year, while stock remains up 9.73 percent year to date. Not bad considering independent technology and market research company Forrester Research predicts that global purchases of IT goods and services will equal $1.66 trillion in 2009, down three percent, after an eight percent rise the previous year.

The software maker's involvement in the mobile phone industry is set to be one of the firm's biggest areas of growth this year. Sybase's increase in fourth generation technology, which allows users to check their bank account balances and make transactions via their handset, is largely fuelled by a greater acceptance of the technology and a lack of infrastructure in the Third World, says Chen.

"The reason why that [area] is important is because... mobile banking, mobile payment systems, remittance, are all starting to develop, its becoming a mature industry," he explains. "We now have a system in Austria where we own 80-90 percent of paying bills through handsets. If you go to Austria and get into a cab, you can pay via your cellphone.

"In Nigeria only one million people can have a relationship with the bank so what happens to the other twelve million? They use the phone to buy electricity. Developing countries have that lack of infrastructure so the phone is very important, not everyone can go home and get on the internet, there's no such concept."

Sybase owns 45 percent of cross border text and picture messages globally and last year reported that more than 200 billion messages were sent using their services. Adding to the figure, in July the firm acquired a unit of Cable & Wireless, which helps mobile phone users around the world exchange text and picture messages cross country, for an undisclosed sum.

Under the terms of the deal Sybase also gained exclusive rights to sell a mobile data roaming service, which supports continued use of data services like mobile web for subscribers when abroad.

To date, the firm's biggest growth in the mobile sector has been in Asia, but Chen says it's a natural progression for more countries to take up Sybase's mobile technology.

"Europe is a lot more advanced... in using mobile devices and more trusting. Some parts of Asia have a lot of phones so that's a natural thing to use [while] in other parts... they don't have that infrastructure and so they have to use phones. India is the same."

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