Patrick Donovan once had to telephone his chief executive at home to explain that a cash forecast was wrong. The figures had already gone to a board meeting. When the month closed, the cash had failed to cooperate with the assumptions. Accounting has many satisfactions; this was unlikely to have been one of them.
He checked the numbers, admitted the error and offered to tell the board immediately. The chief executive was upset and took charge of the explanation. Donovan later received more responsibility. His account of the episode ends with a rather practical discovery: admitting an expensive mistake can make someone more willing to trust you with the next decision.
“Own your mistake and do it quickly,” he recalled. It is an unusually useful starting point for understanding a software executive. Long before becoming chief executive of 74Software, Donovan worked in the business of checking whether an attractive account of the future could survive contact with the arithmetic.
A promotion eleven years in the making
Donovan’s preparation began in accounting, with a degree from Arizona State University and, later, an MBA from the University of Colorado. His career included public accounting and finance jobs across businesses of very different sizes. That range matters: running the numbers inside an established company and doing so inside a small technology business expose different kinds of uncertainty.
He joined Axway in 2007. In 2011, when the software business separated from Sopra and went public, he helped with the spin-off and listing. As chief financial officer of the listed group, he supervised its financial and legal functions. His responsibilities placed him close to the company’s commitments, financing and operating model, years before the top job became his.
On April 6, 2018, the board chaired by Pierre Pasquier appointed him chief executive, replacing Jean-Marc Lazzari. The announcement followed on April 9. By then, Donovan had spent more than a decade inside Axway and several years in France. He was an American executive with experience of the French business from within, including the transaction that had made it independent.
The assignment was to accelerate a transformation already under way. This was a promotion built on familiarity. The board was entrusting the operating plan to someone who had spent years examining how the business actually worked. Knowing the accounts could help. Knowing the organization would be necessary.
The house has to stay open
Axway operates in a part of technology that people usually encounter through its consequences. Files move securely. Business partners exchange information. Applications connect through APIs. Financial data reaches accounting systems. The work becomes conspicuous when a connection fails, which is an awkward arrangement for anyone hoping for applause.
At Axway’s 2021 summit, Donovan used a home-renovation analogy to explain digital transformation. People might still be living in the building while it was being altered. The foundation had to remain useful through the work. It was an accessible way to describe the predicament of organizations that need new capabilities while keeping their existing operations running.
He pointed to customers including Railinc, which supplies data and messaging services to North America’s freight railway industry, and B3, the Brazilian financial market infrastructure company. Those examples give the metaphor some weight. The attraction of a new digital service must coexist with the obligations of an established system.
His argument allowed for incremental change as well as new applications. Existing infrastructure could be improved, connected and made less costly to operate. For a chief executive, that creates a demanding promise: help customers move forward while respecting the systems on which their daily business already depends. The renovation analogy comes with a useful implied rule. Keep the lights on.
“Often, you need to innovate on both the ‘here’ and the ‘there.’”
Patrick Donovan · Axway Summit, 2021
In 2019, Donovan had described innovation in terms of information that customers already possessed. Data about preferences, partner interactions and connected devices could be difficult to reach inside older systems. Connecting it with information from elsewhere could support new services and better decisions. This gave Axway a particular place in the process: helping organizations use what they had accumulated. For an enterprise with years of operating history, the raw material for a new idea might already be somewhere in the building.
A useful API needs an audience
Donovan returned to a related question in a May 2023 article about APIs: what happens after the technology has been built? An interface can make data available, but availability alone does little for a business if developers never use it. The achievement has to extend beyond publication.
His emphasis was on consumption. Organizations should think about which APIs serve a business purpose and how people will discover and adopt them. It is an argument for following a technical investment through to its practical use. A well-stocked shop with an invisible front door still has a retail problem.
This concern fits the business he was running. Axway’s integration products sit between systems, teams and organizations. Their purpose depends on activity across those boundaries. Counting interfaces can describe supply; understanding their use gets closer to the reason for creating them.
There is a financial executive’s question underneath the technical language: what is the return on the work? Donovan’s writing links the answer to behavior. Someone must find the service valuable enough to use. That gives a product team a more revealing task than simply adding another item to a catalogue.
Two companies, one address on the stock market
In September 2024, Donovan’s remit changed. Axway completed the acquisition of Sopra Banking Software, now SBS, in a transaction valued at €330 million. A €131 million capital increase and approximately €200 million in new credit facilities helped finance the operation. The share issue attracted subscriptions above the amount offered.
Banking software brought a different collection of products and customers into the group. SBS works on areas including deposits, lending, payments and compliance. Axway’s business covers integration and infrastructure. Together, they put Donovan in charge of a broader software portfolio, with relationships extending across financial institutions and other enterprises.
The distinction between parent and operating company became essential. Donovan had been Axway’s CEO from 2018 to 2024. He became the founding CEO of 74Software, the group bringing Axway and SBS together. Roland Royer took the chief executive role at Axway. Éric Bierry continued to lead SBS and became the group’s deputy CEO.
Those names help explain the arrangement. Donovan’s new responsibility encompassed the combined enterprise; the operating businesses retained their own leaders. An acquisition creates plenty of opportunities to centralize decisions. This structure instead gives the parent a defined job while leaving specialist management close to the products and customers.
Why an Arizona executive leads a company called 74
The name arrived with some French geography attached. Haute-Savoie, the region around Lake Annecy where Sopra began in 1968, is Department 74. The group’s chosen name acknowledges that history. A software company can carry its origins in two digits, sparing everyone a considerably longer explanation on a business card.
For Donovan, based in Scottsdale, the role connects an American working life with an organization whose lineage is French. The business renamed Axway Software as 74Software in December 2024, while Axway continued as an operating brand. The distinction is worth keeping straight: the familiar product name survived the change above it.
The group describes Axway and SBS as operating largely independently, with their own strategies and plans. Shared administrative services support those businesses. Its founder’s family office remains invested, another connection between the new organization and its older roots.
That combination makes the name more than a fresh label. It links a portfolio formed through acquisition to an existing ownership culture and operating history. Donovan’s task is to make the arrangement work across businesses that have reasons to preserve their identities. The parent must earn its usefulness, too.
The figures have to carry the argument
By February 2026, 74Software was reporting the results of its first full calendar year after the combination. Revenue for 2025 was €707.2 million. Profit on operating activities reached €107.3 million, or 15.2% of revenue. Net profit was €40.8 million. Donovan emphasized execution, the predictability of revenue and progress integrating SBS.
The next half-year added evidence. For the six months to June 2026, revenue was €367 million, with organic growth of 8.6%. Recurring revenue represented 91.3% of product revenue. That denominator matters: it describes the product business, rather than every euro earned by the group.
The figures also require a little restraint. Half-year unlevered free cash flow fell to €32.8 million from €76.4 million a year earlier. Revenue growth, operating profit and cash flow answer different questions. Putting them together gives a fuller account of performance than choosing the most agreeable number.
The next change is in the plumbing
In September 2026, 74Software announced an internal legal reorganization intended to align its corporate structure with the portfolio model. The listed parent would oversee strategy, capital allocation, portfolio management and governance. Completion was expected before the end of October, subject to regulatory confirmation and final corporate steps.
For Donovan, this is the less theatrical work that follows a transaction: making the organization fit the way it intends to operate. It belongs beside the product launches and financial results in his story because it defines where decisions will sit.
His career has repeatedly brought him to that boundary between an attractive plan and the arrangements needed to sustain it. The early forecast error offers a modest but useful lens on the job. Numbers deserve checking. Assumptions deserve attention. And when the two disagree, someone still has to make the call.