An employee is on vacation in the mountains when it happens: “I left my laptop at home.” Instead of scrambling, the employee logs into a virtual desktop from another device, pulling up what looks and feels like their own PC, delivered through the cloud. That simple moment captures how Steve Shimizu describes Omnissa’s mission—helping companies enable a digital employee experience that allows people to work from anywhere, on any device, he tells us.
For Shimizu, this practical use case reflects a broader evolution in end-user computing. What began with desktop computers moved to laptops and mobile devices, and now extends to “everything” that consumes data—from retail scanners to cars, Shimizu tells us. Omnissa operates at that expanding edge, supporting both physical and virtual endpoints while helping employees stay productive regardless of location.
Read MoreThat same blend of flexibility and discipline shapes how Shimizu thinks about the company’s growth. Although Omnissa emerged from a carve-out, he resists the startup label. Running a multi-billion-dollar organization with thousands of employees is more like earning a pilot license and being handed a “747” as your first plane, he tells us. Growth matters, but only when paired with financial stability—what he calls “profitable growth.”
Finance plays a central role in that balance. Shimizu explains that real partnership comes from moving beyond surface-level metrics and “double-clicking” into the data until it becomes actionable. Just as importantly, finance must revisit those decisions, measuring what worked and what didn’t, to guide the company through its next phase of transformation, he tells us.
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CFOTL: Tell us about Omnissa. What is the company, and what are its offerings?
Shimizu: Omnissa sits at an exciting intersection of what we call enabling a digital employee experience. And you hear that phrase and think, “What does that mean?” The simplest way to describe it is: we help companies enable employees to work from anywhere, on any device.
That includes helping them deploy and securely manage physical endpoints—like mobile phones and desktops—as well as virtual endpoints in cloud environments. For example, if an employee is traveling and realizes they left their laptop at home, a virtual desktop environment lets them access their “PC” from virtually any device, pulling up what looks and feels like their own machine—just delivered through the cloud.
Read MoreWhat’s exciting is that end-user computing is evolving fast. It started with desktops, then laptops, then mobile devices. Now, data is being consumed through vending machines, handheld scanners in retail, cars—everything. That creates a unique opportunity for us to help companies expand that footprint and help employees be more efficient and productive from anywhere in the world.
CFOTL: At Omnissa’s current stage, how do you think about growth versus discipline? What’s your focus?
Shimizu: It’s hard, because when you think about a carve-out, it’s often described like a startup. And we’re really not that. We’re a multi-billion-dollar business with thousands of employees across many legal entities.
I was talking with Shankar, our CEO, about this. It’s like you just got your pilot license—and instead of starting with a small plane, the first plane you’re flying is a 747. That’s what it feels like to manage this business.
But we are still focused on growth. Ultimately, we’re focused on increasing value for our shareholders—whether that’s our LPs, our PE partners, our debt investors, or our employees. The quickest way to do that is through top-line growth. And I’d add a twist: it has to be profitable growth. You can’t run a business at this scale and say, “We’re just going to focus on growth,” because you’ll run out of cash quickly. So we’re trying to strike that balance—what’s the right level of investment to drive growth, while also creating financial stability for the company.
CFOTL: Where does finance have the biggest opportunity at Omnissa to be a proactive business partner?
Shimizu: If we go back to the narrative that we’re going through transformation, there are a lot of decisions we need to make—go-to-market, product, what markets we play in, what verticals we prioritize. That’s where finance can really come in.
And what enables those conversations isn’t just data. In a SaaS business, you have traditional metrics like ARR, gross retention, and net retention. But what makes finance effective is continuing to double-click into a data point until it becomes something someone can use to make a decision or take action. So we don’t just look at gross retention—we ask, “What is it by geography? By segment within the Americas? What’s productivity per rep? Does it change by product mix? If we add one of our workspace or enterprise products, does adoption improve?” The goal is to make it tangible and actionable for the leadership team.
Then the next level is accountability. If you say, “We’re going to make this decision based on these metrics,” you have to go back and measure it and ask, “Was it the right decision?” Some you’ll get right and some you’ll get wrong, but it has to be quantifiable, actionable, and something that resonates across the leadership team. Finance people understand gross retention and ARR deeply, but if you tell an engineering leader, “Our gross retention on this product is dropping,” that may not resonate. You have to translate it: “Here’s what it means—what percentage of customers are staying, and if they’re leaving, why? Is it a product issue, a customer engagement issue, and what levers are we going to pull to improve it?”
Omnissa | www.omnissa.com | Mountain View, CA