Tale of two decades

The transformation story of ManageEngine into an IT enterprise

Introduction: The road to success

ManageEngine was not an overnight success. It took leadership vision, inherent curiosity to experiment, and the desire to be self-sustainable to get where we are. Today, you see an iconic building that is home to 12,000 employees and over 60 enterprise IT solutions used by more than 280,000 customers. What you don’t see is the foundation it stands boldly on—the technology that has stemmed from years of deep R&D that brings these solutions to life.

This is the story of ManageEngine’s path from an ambitious startup to a successful enterprise. In part one of this e-book, we talked about ManageEngine’s journey, business model, and customer-driven culture. In part two, we’ll talk about the steps we’ve taken to strengthen our technology, our growing IT infrastructure, the teams and processes working behind the scenes, and how we cultivate deeper relationships with the people who have been a part of this two-decade long journey.

This e-book is based on internal interviews with our IT leaders and includes excerpts from Leadership Talks, a video series in which our leaders share their personal opinions, anecdotes, and advice for small and medium-sized businesses.

Chapter 1:
WebNMS to OpManager

The first step

Advent Network Management, Inc. was established in 1996 with Java SNMP API 1.0 (a reusable code) on the adventnet.com domain, which gained interest from software developers. The 90s saw a huge optical network boom that benefited the telecom industry and was also the period of Web 1.0, or the early stages of world wide internet, so our initial focus was on network management and providing software for businesses in this industry. Telecommunication companies built networks and installed them worldwide. Carriers would purchase this hardware and provide services to their customers. Our role was to supply software for these telecom carriers.

Over the next two years, the founders continued to work in this domain by building more products on top of the original library and expanding sales in the Silicon Valley. In 1998, Advent Network Management, Inc. was renamed to AdventNet. WebNMS, AdventNet’s first product, shipped OEM solutions such as protocol adapters, software agents, and test and simulation toolkits.

From the archives: WebNMS framework 5 architecture

The dot-com bubble

In the late 90s, internet-based tech companies took over the market. These start-ups gained interest from investors and raised large funds within a short span of time. Telecommunication equipment companies invested heavily into laying optic fiber cables, adding new switches, and building wireless networks to keep up. However, the market didn't require so many companies to manufacture hardware for the modest requirements of the internet back then. Excessive spending, limited understanding of new technology, and market overconfidence led to the crash. By mid-2001, most of these venture-capital-funded companies were wiped out.

For AdventNet, the dot-com burst resulted in loss of customers. At this point, we were relying on a handful of businesses that survived the crash. This meant large deals, but an extremely limited and specific market with intense competition. We realized we needed to diversify and spread our addressable market. Our goal: to cater to any business that needs technology. Since we had roots in telecom network management, we had the commonality of domain knowledge and technology to move forward with a network management solution.