In this episode, Vivin Sathyan, Senior Technology Evangelist at ManageEngine, shares how contextual integration across IT management tools is reshaping how organizations respond to threats, align with business goals, and deliver measurable value. He also explains why thoughtful AI adoption, role-specific functionality, and global proximity to customers are essential to building trust and delivering results.
Organizations are demanding more from their IT management platforms—not just toolsets, but tailored systems that meet specific business and security objectives. Vivin Sathyan, Senior Technology Evangelist at ManageEngine, shares how the company is responding with an integrated approach that connects IT, security, and business outcomes.
ManageEngine, a division of Zoho Corporation, now offers a suite of over 60 products that span identity and access management, SIEM, endpoint protection, service management, and analytics. These components don’t just coexist—they interact contextually. Vivin outlines a real-world example from the healthcare sector, where a SIM tool detects abnormal login behavior, triggers an identity system to challenge access, and then logs the incident for IT service resolution. This integrated chain reflects a philosophy where response is not just fast, but connected and accountable.
At the heart of the platform’s effectiveness is contextual intelligence—layered between artificial intelligence and business insights—to power decision-making that aligns with enterprise risk and compliance needs. Whether it’s SOC analysts triaging events, CIS admins handling system hygiene, or CISOs aligning actions with corporate goals, the tools are tailored to fit roles, not just generic functions. According to Vivin, this role-based approach is critical to eliminating silos and ensuring teams speak the same operational and risk language.
AI continues to play a role in enhancing that coordination, but ManageEngine is cautious not to follow hype for its own sake. The company has invested in its own AI and ML capabilities since 2012, and recently launched an agent studio—but only after evaluating how new models can meaningfully add value. Vivin points out that enterprise use cases often benefit more from small, purpose-built language models than from massive general-purpose ones.
Perhaps most compelling is ManageEngine’s global-first strategy. With operations in nearly 190 countries and 18+ of its own data centers, the company prioritizes proximity to customers—not just for technical support, but for cultural understanding and local compliance. That closeness informs both product design and customer trust, especially as regulations around data sovereignty intensify.
This episode challenges listeners to consider whether their tools are merely present—or actually connected. Are you enabling collaboration through context, or just stitching systems together and calling it a platform?
Learn more about ManageEngine: https://itspm.ag/manageen-631623
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Guest:
Vivin Sathyan, Senior Technology Evangelist, ManageEngine | https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivin-sathyan/
Resources
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Keywords:
sean martin, vivin sathyan, cybersecurity, ai, siem, identity, analytics, integration, platform, risk, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand story podcast
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From Tools to Trust: Why Integration Beats Innovation Hype in Cybersecurity | A Brand Story with Vivin Sathyan from ManageEngine | An On Location RSAC Conference 2025 Brand Story
Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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[00:00:00] Sean Martin: Vivin. Here. We are my friend. Yes we are. It's, it's, uh, it's a good week here in San Francisco. The sun is out today as well. Oh yes. The energy is high. Good day. Energy is good. I love the booth. Huge booth down there. It's very cool. The energy is off the charts down there too. So good. Some good conversations.
Yes, we did, we did. I mean, it
[00:00:19] Vivin Sathyan: was quite busy. Um, it's a good problem to have. Yes. So, yes. Uh, a lot of, keep the
[00:00:24] Sean Martin: team, keep the team going down there.
[00:00:26] Vivin Sathyan: Boy, it is a lot of known faces that. That's the interesting part. So we had a lot of customers and it was, it was good.
[00:00:32] Sean Martin: Good, good. Well, before we get into all the, uh, all the goodness, not that you are not goodness, but I wanna, I wanna know who the fit is and your role at, uh, manage Engine and, uh, then we'll get into some of the other staff.
[00:00:47] Vivin Sathyan: Um, I've been with Manage Engine since 2012, so it's been 13 years now. Um, I work as a senior technology. Consultant. And what do I mean by that is I do two things. One is I, um, take part [00:01:00] in, uh, seminars, conferences, workshops and all that, uh, hosted by manage engine across the globe. And then I talk about technology, I talk about products, and that's one thing I do.
And the second aspect is I also take care of, uh, business development for few countries in markets, uh, like, I mean in areas like Europe, and then few
[00:01:19] Sean Martin: countries in Asia as well. Okay, so. Does that, that cross over into, uh, like a field CTO kind of role where you're engaging with customer, uh, kind of thought leadership, more thought leadership and evangelism, streamlining, uh,
[00:01:33] Vivin Sathyan: how our products should go.
Got it. And what is the market feedback and how are customers reacting to launches? And because not every market is direct, we have to work with partners. So it's a good experience. Yeah.
[00:01:46] Sean Martin: Very cool. So let's talk about the, the. Engine brand. Okay. And all that's going on in there. And the connection to Zoho, I suppose we should touch on that as well.
Sure.
[00:01:59] Vivin Sathyan: Uh, [00:02:00] managing has been around for more than 20 years to be precise. 22 years. Um, so it is a division of Zoho Corporation. So Zoho Corporation has multiple divisions and people confuse Zoho with Manage Engine. Is it, is it kind of an acquisition or, uh, is it a merger and all that? It's just one company with multiple divisions.
So Zoho focuses mainly on delivering business applications like the CRM, your mail and all that. Whereas Manage Engine focuses on delivering IT management, uh, software. So these two other divisions, and specifically to give you some numbers, uh, in North America, we serve, uh, more than 30,000 customers and across the globe, uh, we have reached close to one 90 countries and we serve close to 2.9.
Million customers. So I'm talking about, uh, enterprises and, uh, every year has been, uh, a new learning for us. Uh, we've, uh, learning has happened in phases. So we initially started off with point [00:03:00] products. It was just to address one specific, uh, IT problem. So it was a point product approach. And over the years we have evolved.
So right now. Um, from point products, integrating them contextually to now we have evolved into a platform that enterprises can use. So, I mean, small, medium, and large enterprises.
[00:03:21] Sean Martin: Okay. So a platform with multiple components. What are some of the main components? I mean, it, it management's a pretty broad, broad space.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so give us a view, maybe some of the, the key modules and then, um, how companies. Use, take those in and, and actually use them either directly or through partners.
[00:03:42] Vivin Sathyan: Sure. Um, what started off as, let's say, a small set of IT tools or IT management tools is now drawn to a comprehensive portfolio of close to 60 plus products that are six zero, yes.
6 0, 6, 0 and counting. So 60 [00:04:00] products, um, spanning across what it looks like identity and access management, uh, SIEM. Endpoint protection. And then you have business analytics, uh, security analytics, so it service management. So these are our core vertical steps. We have
[00:04:16] Sean Martin: all these products. Got it. So in, so because they're on the platform, presumably they're intelligence with each module, so collaboration of the components, if you will, to Absolutely.
Yeah. So give me a few scenarios. Of, uh, I dunno, typically use case of, of an organization in healthcare. How, how do they, how do they use
[00:04:41] Vivin Sathyan: manage engine? Sure. Um, so as I mentioned earlier, it was all a point product approach to begin with. So, um, it, service management, well, we had a product, uh, endpoint production, we had a product, and then for SIM we had a product.
Now, as customers evolved, we had to, you know, catch up. We had to cater to their [00:05:00] needs, so we had to make sure that. These point products talk to each other within a context. So it has to be a contextual communication. Now talking about healthcare and, uh, how do we add value to value with our tools to, um, a sector like healthcare?
I mean, give you a very basic example. Okay. Now, any industry for that matter, the technique, the underlying technology is the same. For example, active directory is the same in healthcare, active directory is the same in, you know, banking active directory is the same in manufacturing. So irrespective of the vertical, the technology, the underlying technology is common.
So the pain points have come. So what we decided to do is we wanted to make sure that the offerings that we give to our customers talk to each other in a contextual way. For example, um, in healthcare, if someone is trying to log into a healthcare record maintenance system at let's say, uh, a non-business r, which is out of their shift, okay?
It's kind of an, an. [00:06:00] Behavior. So, and our SIM solution should be capable of detecting that in real time, and at the same time, it should send a signal to the IEM solution, uh, for an action. Okay. So the action could be probably blocking the user, disabling the user, or challenging the user with various Yeah.
Second factor, a third factor or whatever. Yes. And then those two events should be forwarded to an IT service management tool as an incident so that you'll be able. To record and mature the incident and see to a foster closure. Right? So that's the whole philosophy behind introducing foreign products and contextually integrating them.
[00:06:38] Sean Martin: Got it. And uh, if I heard you correctly, you said it, and or security analytics. I'm pretty sure. So having, I guess there's a couple things in there. When I think of that, there's what's going on and am I, am I successful with the analytics part? And then I'm. I'm also gonna guess that there's also the, [00:07:00] what that means from a demonstrable perspective in terms of internal policies.
Are we, are we adhering to what we say we need to do? External regulation and compliance and things like that. So can you touch on both of those?
[00:07:17] Vivin Sathyan: Sure.
[00:07:17] Sean Martin: Um,
[00:07:18] Vivin Sathyan: I would say a commonality, uh, with all the topics that you just mentioned is. Is giving, uh, the customer the ability to have some decision insights in the sense you have artificial intelligence.
Yes. Okay. And then you have contextual intelligence. You'll have to make sure that artificial intelligence fits to the context of the end user or the customer. And added to that, you'll have to have business insights. So when you have these three in the equation, in that order, artificial intelligence and then contextual intelligence, and then you have business insights.
You will be able to, uh, deliver decision input. That's exactly what we're doing. That's the goal. Yeah, that's the goal. Make decisions fast. Yeah. Makes decisions [00:08:00] fast. And at the same time, you'll have to make sure that the signals that you feed in are of good quality so that the outcome is exactly the way you want.
[00:08:08] Sean Martin: And then in terms of how teams, so you have, you have operational teams, you have analysts in the soc, you have managers overseeing that, and then there's. The, the, uh, executive leadership tool, which has a totally different view and perhaps driven by different things than the practitioners. How do, how does what you deliver help connect those different layers within the organization so they're on the same page with respect to here's our business business objective, here are the insights with that.
How does that drive our risk profile? How does that drive our policies? How does it drive our controls and all that? There's a lot. A lot to go in there. And if, if that's not connected properly, then it's, it's kind of hairy for the, for the CISO in particular.
[00:08:54] Vivin Sathyan: Exactly. So the overall objective of the organization, especially the IT teams is, is [00:09:00] simple.
It's just one focus ensuring, uh, security, and it could be in a lot of things, but ensuring securities, the crux of, of let's say, um, whatever objective they have and how do you actually segregate it based on job function. Is our role as a vendor. So what we do is you cannot give a tool that A-C-I-A-O wants to see to your CIS admins, right?
So we'll have to understand their job function, understand their role in achieving the objective, and cater your solutions to the annuals. So that's exactly what we are trying to do. It's, I wouldn't say we are great at it or we are the best at it. No, it's, it's an evolution. So we tailor make a solution.
To fit the exact job needs of the organization. But when you sum it up together, it meets the overall objective of the organization. So you have your helpless team and they have a certain objective in mind. Well deliver what they're expecting. And then you have a SOC team and they [00:10:00] have a certain objective in mind, deliver a solution that fits their objective.
And when you bring all these three together, okay. No more operating in silos, that wouldn't work. Right. Do you see a lot of that still? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, silo operations. Doesn't make sense. Okay. So it's like, um, I see something, you see something totally different. Then we don't arrive at our objectives, so we have to talk to each other.
At the end of the day, everything is a module. There's it or it's a different CT in it. So there has to be transparency, there has to be communication. Technically speaking, there has to be contextual integration so that we achieve the core.
[00:10:37] Sean Martin: So what are some of the new things that you are seeing? And even addressing, clearly we can't get away from ai.
Yep. Um, but you also mentioned Active Directory and I can only imagine what that world looks like now with, with different systems and agents and all kinds of fun stuff. So what, what are you seeing in hearing m just giving you a couple examples, maybe [00:11:00] more what are you seeing in hearing and what's Manage Engine doing to kind of help organizations get ahead of some of these changes that are underway?
[00:11:08] Vivin Sathyan: Sure. Um, I wasn't, this is my second year in RA, so I was here last year and this year. So last year the theme was about ai, AI and ai. So this year AI seems to be a bit outdated. Yeah.
[00:11:22] Sean Martin: It's already, it's already everywhere. Yes.
[00:11:24] Vivin Sathyan: And people are talking about agent ai. So it's agent to agent to, uh, one thing that drives, uh, I mean our core philosophy as a company.
Is, don't go after trends just for the sake of it, if it really adds. Does the
[00:11:39] Sean Martin: advice you give to your customers or your own advice you'd, he, you take for yourself, okay. Or both?
[00:11:45] Vivin Sathyan: We do a bit of both. Okay. Because you cannot, uh, act as an advisory board for every organization out there. It depends on their objectives.
Yeah. So talking about things from a broader perspective is what we, uh, what we do here is, uh, we look at [00:12:00] things, okay? Uh, we are not saying, we are not catching up with a trend. We look at things and we actually try and try to make sense out of it. So we have, as I mentioned earlier, we have close to, uh, 60 or 70 products.
And how will adding AI or agent AI add value to our existing solutions so that we add more value to the customers or the end users? That's the way by which we think about trends, and we have been in the AI space ever since 2012, so we have a separate. Vision, uh, working just for AI and ml, uh, driven by
[00:12:36] Sean Martin: ml
[00:12:36] Vivin Sathyan: Yes.
AI and ML initiatives. So, and very recently we have launched an agent studio as well. So we are catching up with the trends. Only when it will add, only when it adds value to our existing offerings.
[00:12:51] Sean Martin: Not just 'cause marketing thinks it sounds cool. No, we
[00:12:54] Vivin Sathyan: don't believe in that because it doesn't materialize.
You can create some noise, but it doesn't materialize it. [00:13:00] So,
[00:13:00] Sean Martin: yeah. So where, where at? How and where has it materialized? What are some of the changes that you've taken on? Okay. And maybe, maybe a better way to ask the question is where, where have your customers kind of pushed you to do new things and what are some of the outcomes because of that?
Okay. How does that sound?
[00:13:21] Vivin Sathyan: Um, so initially to start off with, what we wanted to do was we had to, we had one thing in mind in the sense if, if there's data and. The quality of the data matters a lot. So we focused on making sure that you only train with quality data. That's one thing that we had in mind and what our customers wanted, was to make things a lot more precise, make things a lot more, uh, simpler to digest so that they will be able to act efficiently.
That was the initial expectation. Okay, so it was more kind of being reactive. Right now, the shift is. Slowly moving [00:14:00] towards being proactive, especially in the space of SIEM where you talk about, uh, threats, uh, and ai, you know, AI based threats, so on and so forth. So, uh, from being, I mean, applying AI for all reactive purposes, we are now moving to applying AI for all pre, I mean, proactive purposes.
So that's the overall objective. Okay. And, and we also believe in, in, in not making everything a large language model problem. Them. Because when you talk about consumer products like chat, GPT or publicity, having an LLM there, large language model there makes sense because you're dealing with, uh, data, you're dealing with unstructured data, you need to have an LLM in place.
But when you talk about, uh, enterprise software or let's say IT management software, you may not have an LLM talking to the application. It could be a small language model, it could be a narrow language model. Right. So sometimes smaller models are better. Okay. It's not [00:15:00] like,
[00:15:00] Sean Martin: yeah. Purpose. Yeah, purpose built.
So
[00:15:02] Vivin Sathyan: we have to make sure that we solve the right use case and based on that right sizing the model or the language model is what we are focusing on in terms of our AI initiated. Right? So, let's
[00:15:14] Sean Martin: see, how are we doing on time? A couple minutes. Let's, um, let's close with, I don't know, some, some feedback you've received.
I. From a CSO or from a security manager or even a practitioner. Okay. Or they say, thank goodness I had these things connected. Otherwise I wouldn't have seen this, or my team would've fallen over here, or we, it would've taken way too long to respond and recovered. Gimme, gimme a story that that sticks out for you that says, because we have such a breadth and depth, and also you're very global, which organizations are also.
Global. How, how does the breadth and depth of all that you deliver in all the [00:16:00] areas around the world help your, your CISO and practitioners gimme, gimme a story.
[00:16:05] Vivin Sathyan: Right? So I believe we are talking about two things here. One is how do you actually bring things together and add value, right? And your global presence, global revenue value, how does that play out?
Okay. So the first aspect is, as I mentioned earlier, we initially started off with point product. So, um. Um, a customer gets one product and gets the taste of it. Mm-hmm. And about the company, about the product, about the service that we offer, and then they decide to onboard multiple products. Right now, over a period of time, let's say we have customers using us for more than 15 years, 20 years.
So even if they change organizations, they take manage engine with them. So that's one thing that we are really proud of. So what happens here is when you give them two or three products, and as they evolve, they want the application. Used to talk to each other. So it was, it was not like a nice to have thing.
It was a must to have thing for them. Right. So they [00:17:00] wanted us to enable contextual integration. So we first delivered that. Okay. I wouldn't say all of our products do that, but most of our products are contextually integrated and, and AI is like the icing on the cake. So we had these thing natively integrated, not just half.
Integration. So the data set was very rich. And when you use that data set to train your ai, the uh, value add was, was huge. Right? That's, that's what the customers liked, uh, in us. So they wanted to, they wanted us to deliver something. I think we exceeded expectation and we are trying our best to keep the wave going.
Right? And about the global reach, well, uh, the global reach, our philosophy starting from day one is to be, uh. In close proximity with the customer. Okay. Uh, be it in the form of partnerships or direct markets. So you have to be on the ground with the customer. You'll have to have your years on the ground.
That's the [00:18:00] philosophy. That's not just a geographical advantage. I would say. That's a philosophical advantage too. Right. So that's how we see it.
[00:18:06] Sean Martin: Yeah. Because it's not just design zone, it's a culture. Absolutely. It's a language. It's, yeah. It should be deeply localized.
[00:18:13] Vivin Sathyan: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why we spend a lot on.
Initiatives like having our own data centers instead of going with third party data centers. So we have data centers across the globe. Sovereignty is important. 18 to 20 data centers across the globe. We, we had to make sure that the service, uh, that the support and also the technology has to be localized.
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:18:36] Sean Martin: Fantastic. Well, then we could talk for hours, but we don't have hours. So hope, hopefully we'll have a chance to do, do more of this and, and hear more stories. Uh. From you and your customers. But, uh, I wanna thank you for the chat today.
[00:18:49] Vivin Sathyan: Thank you very much. Definitely. Did you say everything we
[00:18:51] Sean Martin: wanna say?
Anything else you want to close with? Uh, maybe a word to, uh, to the CISOs and security practitioners that listen to this.
[00:18:57] Vivin Sathyan: Um, I would say, well, uh, [00:19:00] we are doing few things, right? Um, we might not be doing everything right, but we are definitely doing few things, right? That's what try. So if you are talking about securing your enterprises, securing your users, securing your application, securing your devices in any scale.
It's small, medium or large. Well, you can definitely trust us. Yeah. We cater to startups and we also cater to Fortune five hundreds and we have been in the industry, uh, for about 22 years. So we know a thing or two about the trends. Yeah. So yes, we are here. Happy to help.
[00:19:29] Sean Martin: Yeah. And I have to say, hu humility speaks volumes.
My friend literally speaks volumes and that drives trust in my opinion. Exactly. So livin, pleasure chatting with you. Likewise. Everybody listening and watching. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, connect with, uh, the manage engine team. Connect with within, learn more about, uh, the, the many elements that they have for IT and security management and, uh, gain the benefits of, of the global reach and all the capabilities you bring.[00:20:00]
So, thanks everybody.
[00:20:01] Vivin Sathyan: Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. Thank you very much.