Coming Back to OptiVision: Pratheep Chidambaram on a New Chapter for a Business He Has Known for Decades

Pratheep Chidambaram began working with the OptiVision product in 1993 and went on to spend 23 years at Honeywell, progressing through roles spanning project delivery, operations, and engineering. After more than two decades with Honeywell, Pratheep stepped away to pursue independent consulting.

Shortly thereafter, news broke that OptiVision would be carved out of Honeywell and acquired by Perseus Group. Within a short period of the announcement, his phone started ringing with former colleagues eager to share their excitement about what the acquisition could mean for the business.

For Pratheep, who understood both OptiVision’s strengths and the challenges of operating within a much larger organization, the opportunity was compelling enough to bring him back. Today, he is Director of Professional Services at OPTIVIQ, the independent business established around the OptiVision product.

We sat down with Pratheep to discuss why he returned, what it took to separate a deeply integrated software business from Honeywell, and what has changed for employees and customers since the acquisition.

You spent decades working with OptiVision in several different roles. How did that experience shape your understanding of the business?

Pratheep: I started working with the product in 1993, so I knew it extremely well. We have a very strong customer base; some customers have been with us for decades. Over the years, I held several different roles across the business, so I had the opportunity to see it from many different perspectives.

By the time OptiVision was acquired by Perseus, I was very familiar with what made the business successful, but also the challenges and opportunities in front of us.

When you learned OptiVision was being carved out of Honeywell, what went through your mind?

Pratheep: I was thrilled. OptiVision was one business within a very large organization, and over time things had become increasingly segmented. There were naturally many competing priorities across Honeywell, whereas OptiVision needed the ability to focus specifically on its software, customers and market.

Perseus is a dedicated acquirer of software businesses and already had a strong footprint in pulp and paper and manufacturing. Knowing that gave me confidence that OptiVision would be in good hands.

Of course, there was some nervousness as well due to the uncertainty any new acquisition would bring and the impact to the business.

That concern was short lived. Perseus stayed true to its commitment that we would continue to operate independently. Their team worked alongside us to establish the OPTIVIQ brand and gave the business the ability to operate with more independence than we ever had before. 

You weren’t actually with Honeywell when the acquisition was announced. What made you want to come back?

Pratheep: I had taken a small hiatus to pursue independent consulting when the acquisition was announced. Within minutes of the public announcement, several people from the team called me. There was profound excitement about the news, the energy was infectious.

I had spent so much of my career with OptiVision and knew the product, customers and people incredibly well. Hearing that excitement and seeing the opportunity for the business to begin this new chapter made me want to be part of it again. Coming back was a breath of fresh air.

OptiVision had been part of Honeywell for years. How difficult was it to separate the business operationally?

Pratheep: As you can imagine we were very heavily integrated into Honeywell, so there was certainly complexity involved.

Having a well defined Transition Service Agreement helped, but equally important was having a team that had done this before. There is a difference between saying you can manage a carve-out and having the experience and processes to execute one effectively. Perseus was able to draw on its existing knowledge and best practices to make the separation as efficient as possible.

How did you protect customers through a transition of that scale?

Pratheep: That was one of our biggest priorities. Enterprise software customers depend on continuity, so we took great care to make sure the transition didn’t create unnecessary disruption. Perseus and our team developed a roadmap for the migration, and then we worked through it customer by customer. There wasn’t one mass migration where everyone moved at the same time. That would have created unnecessary risk. Instead, each customer was brought over independently so we could manage the process carefully.

I don’t believe our customers experienced meaningful disruption from the transition. Some things have changed since the acquisition, but I would say they’ve changed positively. We’ve continued developing the product and are now looking at how we can leverage AI To enhance our offerings.

Beyond the operational separation, what changed for the team?

Pratheep: One of the biggest changes was identity. Within Honeywell, OptiVision was one among many products in different vertical markets competing for priority. Following the acquisition, standing up the OPTIVIQ brand and rallying the team behind it became very important.

There is a lot of unity within the team today. We’re operating as our own business and making decisions based on what is right for our customers, our employees and the future of the product.

Has independence changed the way decisions get made?

Pratheep: We have much more independence today, but the beautiful thing is that we’re not alone.

We have access to so many peers across Perseus and Constellation who are dealing with similar challenges. Regardless of which industry you serve, vertical market software businesses often encounter many of the same problems.

It’s a good combination. We’re empowered to operate autonomously, but we’re also part of a larger ecosystem where we can learn from others’ experiences. Not every business has to solve the same problem from scratch.

When you look ahead, what excites you most about OPTIVIQ’s next chapter?

Pratheep: Continuing to develop the product and expand what we can offer our customers. We’re at an interesting intersection. We have an established product with decades of industry knowledge behind it, while technologies like AI are giving us new capabilities to modernize and create additional value.

Being part of the larger ecosystem helps with that too. Teams are sharing what’s working and what isn’t in real time, so we can learn from one another and make our own experiments and deployments more efficient.

In this new era of AI, the sky is the limit. My team and I are encouraged by this next phase of growth and opportunity, and we’re excited to see what the next several years have in store.

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