When you took over as CEO, Hyperion separated that position from the chairman's post, which your predecessor, Jeffrey Rodek, said is a preferable governance model. How's it working? More and more companies are starting to separate the chairman and CEO roles. From a governance standpoint, it's a pretty good separation. It lessens the chance for the CEO to have the board in his pocket.

From a governance perspective, what's your assessment of former CA Chairman and CEO Sanjay Kumar's decision to plead guilty to the financial fraud charges he had been facing? I haven't followed that case so closely, but I'll tell you that the interchange I have with our auditors is quite simple. I believe that if you set conservative guidance and you follow that, you'll keep people inbounds. When you set growth targets that are too aggressive for your business, you force people out onto the ethical edge. The No. 1 thing a CEO can do to maintain ethical guardrails is to set conservative guidance and exceed it.

What is Hyperion doing in terms of global software development? We have about 100 people in Minsk that came to us through the Brio acquisition; we have big development centers in [Connecticut] and California, and we have another in Bangalore. For about two years now, we've done follow-the-sun programming. It has absolutely changed the way we build.

What's your position on the H-1B visa issue? It's hard to separate H-1B from the geopolitical issues. From a geopolitical standpoint, we're cutting off our nose to spite our face in terms of having security constraints around students who want to come study here. From an H-1B standpoint, we can always use more technical talent. We ought to be letting more H-1Bs through.

What's your response to unemployed U.S. IT professionals who feel that H-1B workers are stealing U.S. jobs? There's no simple answer. It's hard to connect the dots between the high demand for great technical people and the unemployed IT professionals. It's a complete mystery to me.