UK tech giant Micro Focus has completed its $8.8bn takeover of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) software business, to create the seventh largest software company in the world.

The merger was finalised on 1 September, following the announcement of HPE software’s acquisition 12 months earlier.

“The whole thing is the next step in a journey we started in 2011, which is about consolidating the infrastructure software market,” said Micro Focus Executive Chairman, Kevin Loosemore, at the ‘Discover the New Micro Focus’ event at the International Convention Centre on Monday.

“We’re software focused. When I took over Micro Focus in 2011, there was some confusion about what we were doing, and I tried to simplify it by saying, basically we’re a software company. We build software, we sell software and we support software.

“As of today, we have $4.4bn in revenue, we’re now the largest company in the UK market FTSE, second largest software company in Europe and seventh largest in the world.

“We have 18,000 employees across 50 countries, and we have 40,000 customers, including 98 in the Fortune 5000 – so we’re a company of scale and we’re going to be around.”

While both Micro Focus and HPE are preceded by decades of organisational success, the new conglomerate is now looking to customers to drive future growth.

“We don’t chase revenue growth for the sake of chasing revenue growth,” said Loosemore. “We’re truly focused on what the customer’s challenges are, and that brings more value to them.”

“The temptation is to go and try and invent the next big thing, and that normally doesn’t work in mature companies, you have to focus innovation around the customer.”

Success in a hybrid model

As well as ensuring that customers have access to the right capabilities to take them forward, the merger also aims to embrace the new hybrid model of enterprise IT, bringing customers more value from existing technologies.

“Everyone talks about hybrid, and if you look at the press you’d be forgiven for thinking that people think hybrid is all about going to the public cloud,” said Loosemore.

“We believe it’s a bit more complicated than that.

“There’s a constant stream of demand from end-users who want more, and they’d like you to do it for less. And you’ve still got all this stuff that you’ve got to link it to from the past, because it didn’t go away.

“That’s the real world that most of our customers live in.”

Also speaking at the event was President of Micro Focus Asia-Pacific, Stephen McNulty.

“We’re here to support a hybrid model of enterprise IT,” he said. “The complexity is on the customer’s side, because they have infinite possibilities and a lot of technologies that are coming along, and they’re not even sure how that will impact them yet.”

“We simplify their complexity.”

Thinking locally

Managing Director at Micro Focus Australia and New Zealand, Peter Fuller, discussed the next step in helping Australian customers maximise their results from the merger.

“In talking to our customers and our partners, a clear message has come out that businesses need to learn more about the new organisation and what we do,” he said.

“Their challenge internally is working with us, negotiating multiple contracts, us working with them to help us simplify doing business.

“From the Australian audience, I’d say the customers I’ve spoken to, without exception, are really excited about this. They can see the value in this combination.”