OpenText’s Muhi Majzoub: Engineering Platform Growth with AI
From when OpenText’s Muhi Majzoub first joined the company in 2012, he has grown his engineering team from 794 to 8,000, as of 2024.
Now, the company works to tight product deadlines as it works to deploy its ValueEdge and Aviator platforms. The company’s customer base is actively engaged with the programme, as OpenText is able to take a specific platform (ie. Content Aviator, Search Aviator and ValueEdge) and apply it to a customer’s data and specific use cases.
“That's going out in the next three to six months to [roughly] 15,000 people in the company - all of engineering, all of professional services and all of our support team,” Muhi explains. “We're enhancing and deploying our own platform now that we own Value Edge.”
Technology Magazine attended a roundtable session at OpenText World Europe 2024 with Muhi, as he explores the enterprise benefits of OpenText's Aviator platform and Cloud Edition (CE), in addition to how he keeps engineers engaged during a time of mass AI developments.
Future-led priorities to develop business efficiency
Muhi highlights his three priorities at OpenText: Content Aviator, Search Aviator and ValueEdge. He explains how Content Aviator is the most mature platform currently and is already available for customers to start using.
The platform uses generative AI (Gen AI) to revolutionise content management with an AI content assistant to power smarter content interactions and insights.
“We're really excited about how Aviator is shaping up for us at OpenText,” Muhi says.
“It’s all about the value I add to customers. I have over 15,000 of the top enterprise companies and governments in the Western world that depend on our platform,” he continues. “In the government space, we are very proud to serve the top 15 governments in the world, starting with Europe, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, England, the Netherlands and Spain, Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and India."
Enterprises are already using one or two of OpenText’s content management systems, with Muhi citing Nestle as a key example, as they are running in the company’s cloud system.
Likewise, the German government, Shell, BMW, European Central Bank and Bundesbank are all notable clients. Adding Aviator to OpenText’s platform “will add value very quickly to these customers,” says Muhi.
His next priority is Search Aviator with the underlying IDOL platform. It integrates data from a range of sources and makes it accessible to users via a search interface.
“[It] plays a big role within intelligence communities for antiterrorism or for police departments for theft and burglaries,” Muhi adds. “They can analyse CCTV cameras here in the UK. We have multiple cities and jurisdictions that leverage IDOL to do anti-burglary.
“It is also able to complete facial recognition and audio transcripts. We have 107 connectors in IDOL.”
ValueEdge is Muhi’s third main priority, which is the company’s cloud-based value stream management (VSM) and DevOps platform.
Muhi says: “Every company around the world today during the pandemic hired hundreds of engineers. They're all software companies now. The creation of companies like Uber, DoorDash, Uber Eats - they're all software companies, testing performance, security and reliability. It all becomes part of a development life cycle
“On average every year I have hundreds of major projects running in parallel. Every quarter we deliver 50 to 70 products. Every one of them translates into multiple opportunities.”
Cloud Edition (CE) and Aviator: Enhancing customer experience
Moving forward, Muhi states that he will be considering business networks for OpenText’s supply chain, in addition to harnessing Aviator for customer communication or digital asset management.
In this vein, Cloud Edition (CE) was created as OpenText engineering staff moved to a 90 day development cycle.
“They have two weeks to test,” Muhi explains. “That means they need to improve their automation and how they use ValueEdge, because our customers don't have the luxury to release every year or every 90 days.”
Looking to the future, he continues: “One day we will be monthly. Every night, my engineers are submitting thousands of lines of code to ValueEdge and Aviator will test it, document it and regenerate it if it needs to. [The hope is that] Aviator will fix any bugs and then give a log report to a human being to look at and fix.”
Muhi adds that moving forward, autonomous workflows will be a key focus for OpenText for the next six months.
“The main reason is that the Aviator can be self-sufficient and can make the decision itself and not depend on me or one of my engineers,” he says.
‘AI as copilot’ rather than replacing human workforce
As OpenText continues to grow and develop its AI strategies, Muhi explains that he wants the technology to act as a tool rather than a replacement. As a result, OpenText engineers are available to complete tasks that are more creative and complex.
“I don't want AI to replace human jobs. I want to make my employees stellar employees, meaning I want to take a junior engineer and make them a senior engineer much faster,” he comments.
“At OpenText, we continue to grow. We continue to acquire other companies and as we do that, the challenge for me is to integrate these new code lines, integrate the technology and find the right use cases where two products come together, like Fortify and Value Edge.
“The goal is to take the boring stuff away from the daily life of my employees.”
AI is moving to a place where “it will make life easier for us,” says Muhi. “It will allow us to get better at certain things and these can be applied to help engineers in every discipline. Think of how much benefit they will leverage from our Aviator.
Muhi also explains that OpenText is better positioned to protect its company network systems via Aviator. The AI will then support employee skill sets and elevate their work to a higher level.
“We've given them the tools they need internally to advance their skill. If I can make Aviator document the code to a 98% accuracy level, I could tell my engineers to focus on other areas like building architecture, system design and enhancing features. These opportunities not only improve life for my engineers, but also work to serve our customers better.”
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