With more than 25 years of experience under his belt, John DuBois, CEO at IT encryption vendor, Senetas, has extensive business management and sales and marketing experience across the Asia-Pacific region and has worked in IT for more than 16 years.
DuBois was previously an executive vice president of SAP Asia, responsible for South West Asia 1996-2000; director SAP ANZ 2000-2003; and vice president Asia Pacific 2003-2006. His earlier appointments included general manager and executive roles in both Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and IBM.
"I had previously held an executive vice president role with SAP managing across west Asia, including Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, Pakistan and Vietnam, with respective country managing directors reporting to me," says DuBois.
"Also before taking up this role at Senetas, I had Asia Pacific including Japan, with responsibility for partners and channels which constitute 55 percent of SAP business.
"Prior to SAP I had Asia-Pacific responsibility for outsourcing at CSC and was also the executive responsible for finance, communications and media at what was initially ISSC and was renamed IBM Global Services."
From architecture to technology
DuBois almost ended up in architecture of the non-IT sort. However, he was offered a role in finance after leaving school and ended up at night school studying banking, finance, law, economics and accounts. It prepared him well for an international career.
"I had been offered other roles in SAP in both Europe and the US and I thought leading an ASX company would provide me further exposure in Australia with the opportunity to contribute to other boards at a future date."
It's far more challenging to work for an ASX-listed Australian company than for a global vendor, says DuBois. Often he will be involved in engineering product roadmaps, planning and development along with manufacturing products.
"Packaging, promotional and marketing material you do mostly yourself in a small company," he says.
"I have also been focused on building a brand from scratch, [which is] far more challenging than leveraging a global brand in a regional geography."
Senetas' beginnings
Currently Senetas has around 7000 shareholders and 460 million shares on issue. It was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1999 as an IT-related venture capital (VC) investor known as Secure ID-Net Ltd. Following a number of investments that included CTAM, IBK Enterprise Management Systems and Datum Group, Senetas was refocused away from its VC roots.
The company is now an operational business focused on two main areas: Senetas Security - which designs and manufactures high-speed network encryption products; and Senetas Consulting - which provides professional business performance consulting and training.
"We recognised we had in our high-speed network encryption a recognised piece of technology," says DuBois. "In addition we had a consulting division that had the potential to be the leader in its field of expertise.
"So it was time to do away with the VC focus, to bring an operational discipline to the company and maximise the opportunities to be one of the best products and services organisations in the country, which is what we did."
DuBois was brought on board to help rebuild the company from the ground up with a new strategy, direction, processes, culture and values. He also helped to implement systems to support these processes.
"We reined in spending, re-negotiated key agreements and undertook internal realignment - from the board level, top to bottom, the business was reshaped.
"We set about expanding our distribution channels and building our brand globally and building a product roadmap for the future."
Last year Senetas introduced three new products and is in better shape. "In essence we remade the company, our success to date is rescuing a loss-making company and laying the foundations for future growth."
In the public eye
Working in a publicly listed company hasn't been without its challenges. The company - like all public companies - is required to comply with the continuous disclosure provisions of the Corporations Act 2001 and ASX listing rules.
"It is recognised as fundamental to the operation of our capital markets that price-sensitive information is released in a timely, complete and accurate way to maintain market integrity," he says.
"The challenge a public company may face occurs when these laws compel a public company to disclose information which may harm its competitive or market positioning. Conversely a private company would not necessarily be required to disclose such information."
Senetas has received some offshore marketing assistance in the form of an export market development grant, from the Federal Government, which amounts to approximately $80,000 per annum for the past seven years.
"What we have been able to achieve has been done internally with the use of shareholder funds," says DuBois. "We have always been and we remain debt free."
When you choose to design and manufacture in Australia, employing Australia's brightest engineers, DuBois is dismayed to hear that government departments are opting for bigger foreign names to do the job.
"We hear stories about some of the offshore product potentially having fake chips and product that should be US-made actually being grey-marketed from China," he says.
"These things worry us in the security sector. Surely it is incumbent on governments, especially at this time, to support local organisations they know and can trust to secure our nation's government secrets and enterprise IP.
"I believe in areas such as national security, it is incumbent on authorities to positively discriminate towards Australia's trusted technologies, especially when they are the major supplier to other governments and defence in other countries."
Support here and abroad
Over the past two years Senetas has established reseller channels in around 30 international markets, but the way it works is a little different to some.
"We lead from the front since we have a very specific product set, designed for a range of security applications," says DuBois.
"We are connected with IT organisations both large (such as Fujitsu, IBM and TVS India) and smaller security integrators such as ICS in Saudi Arabia; Atlas in the Middle East; Itec Technologies in Korea; and specific encryption-enabled companies such as idQuantique and Smart Quantum. We currently have 12 channel partners selling across 30 international markets."
The channel is imperative to Senetas' current and growing success. "It allows us to reach to all the geographies we choose and not have to set up a local office. Having local representation is important in all markets," he says.
"[End-users] want the reassurance that should something go wrong you've got someone there to help."
DuBois' work at Senetas has led him all over the world, including Vietnam. In early 2008, the vendor won a contract with the Vietnamese military to secure its technology systems. "It was Vietnam who approached us after we'd won an AIIA award and were presenting at the regional technology awards in Singapore," says DuBois.
"At our first meeting with General Bac, who runs the Centre for Military Science and Technology (part of the Ministry of Defence), he commented that Vietnam favoured working with Australia because it was Australia who was the first to come to the aid of Vietnam after the war. So he was happy to do business with us."
DuBois says the differences between old Vietnam and the new is still very evident and is a wonderful contrast.
"The first thing you notice in Hanoi is the chaotic traffic and the state of the road network, but they manage to navigate through and mostly have a smile on their faces," he says.
"Infrastructure is still a problem in parts of Vietnam, but they are eager to adopt new technology. It reminds me of Thailand more than 10 years ago - and look how far the Thais have come in that time."
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