Velocity Around Ecosystem Integration Impossible Without Our Great Customers

You may have seen our latest press release on Cleo’s tremendous growth in 2018 and really, over the past six years, and I wanted to take just a moment to convey my sincere appreciation to Cleo customers and employees for a phenomenal 2018.
From successfully innovating a host of new integration capabilities to enabling our new and current customers on their digital transformation journeys, Cleo accomplished so much in the last calendar year. Our biggest accomplishment, we believe, has been around raising people’s sights about the idea of ecosystem integration – a new approach for companies who are focused on digitally transforming themselves into ecosystem businesses. It is a pivotal moment for most companies to successfully navigate the forces unleashed by digital transformation, such as cloud migration, the proliferation of SaaS applications, the exponential growth of data, and the rise of connected devices.
The confluence of these forces has created both a massive opportunity and significant risks for businesses. At Cleo, we fundamentally believe that the “edge,” where multi-enterprise ecosystems interact, is where value is either created or destroyed.
For example, if a company is not able to say “yes” to a new trading partner’s demands, such as SLA or faster onboarding requirements, they are in jeopardy of losing revenue from that trading partner. Hence, it is extremely important for companies to focus on end-to-end business processes that extend beyond the four walls of an enterprise connecting the external partners – customers, suppliers, and service providers – with their internal applications (on-premise and cloud) and data stores.
However, traditional approaches using disparate “siloed” integration technologies for B2B Integration and application integration will cause significant inefficiencies. Given such an acute need in the market, I’m grateful for the hard work and dedication of our product teams in developing Cleo Integration Cloud into the industry’s leading ecosystem integration platform that addresses these inefficiencies and helps companies digitally transform and better compete.
Cleo Integration Cloud is the only integration platform that practices the unique approach of executing integrations through the lens of end-to-end business processes (e.g. order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, etc.), as opposed to an infrastructure-based approach popular with most other integration vendors. Cleo enables fluidity in integrations delivering business agility and real-time decision-making through four core capabilities:
1. A single platform for B2B integration and application integration
2. A mix of batch and real-time processing
3. Full-service integration through a strategic blend of self-service and managed service capabilities
4. Context- and persona-based business insights
These functions, coupled with flexible hybrid integration deployment models and world-class support, make Cleo Integration Cloud the leading EDI and iPaaS solution that it is and one of G2 Crowd’s Top 50 Software Solutions for growing businesses. It’s also why we’re the chosen platform for food logistics integration, as well as the integration cornerstone across retail, supply chain, healthcare, financial services, and technology organizations around the world.
It is truly humbling and rewarding to see the rapid adoption of Cleo Integration Cloud resulting in a six-year 31 percent CAGR, a 45 percent new-product bookings growth, a 95 percent retention rate, and the doubling of our cloud customers in 2018. But we couldn’t have done it without our great customers and partners.
We are deeply appreciative of our customers’ continued support of Cleo and their willingness to trust and leverage Cleo Integration Cloud to support their emerging business needs. We thank them for their loyalty and their willingness to validate and co-innovate with Cleo in evolving our ecosystem integration capabilities to meet the emerging business data challenges in every industry.
Mahesh Rajasekharan is President and Chief Executive Officer of Cleo, a global software company that delivers ecosystem integration software solutions to help companies discover and create value across their multi-enterprise ecosystems.
An experienced business leader, Rajasekharan has expertise in business strategy, operations, sales and marketing, supply chain management, SaaS technologies, enterprise software, consulting services, private equity, acquisition integration and P&L management. Since joining Cleo in 2012, he has built the company into a global integration software leader, overseen tremendous revenue and geographic expansion, and shaped the company’s reputation through thought leadership, product innovation and customer-service excellence.
Prior to leading Cleo, he served as Chief Operating Officer at SumTotal Systems, where he led the dramatic turnaround of this $100 million multinational software company. Previously, Rajasekharan led the High Tech Industry Sector at i2 Technologies, where he managed global sales and a $60 million P&L.
Rajasekharan serves on the Board of Directors for Cleo, Omatic Software, Ascend Software, and Banyan Software, and is on the Advisory Board for StartupWind, a social ideation network. He holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University, an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Texas Tech University, and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Anna University, India. He also earned an MBA in Finance, Strategy, and Marketing from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, where he graduated No. 1 in his class.