Founded in 1977, Oracle has been in the software game a while. Originally specialising in database management systems, the company evolved over the years to also develop computer hardware and enterprise software. The CEO Magazine spoke to David Callaghan, Senior Vice President Alliances and Channels for Oracle’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) operation, about how Oracle has been working with partners and new technology like the cloud to improve its offering. David has been with Oracle for more than 10 years, and in the IT industry for more than 30. Since coming to his current role, David has focused on unification to promote growth, particularly in the emerging field of cloud.
“I went into [my current] role just over three years ago,” David says. “I saw the opportunity to unify our alliance and channels teams, which had been somewhat fragmented before. They were aligned by either particular product groups or country groups, and I wanted to bring that together and unify it into a single critical mass. It has certainly been successful in terms of our numbers and although I can’t go into those in great detail, what I can share and you can see from the earning statements over the last three years, is that the EMEA region is being consistently highlighted, notwithstanding the economic challenges, as a region of clear growth. Even in the last earnings report, with the emphasis on cloud, the EMEA market was called out as a key growth driver for cloud, and again that is something we are very keen to put focus on within the alliance and channels group. We are seeing massive growth coming in all aspects of cloud. I think a lot of has come from the organisational changes we made around unification. The other thing that I saw was an opportunity to be more relevant: more relevant to our partners, more relevant to their customers, more relevant to the lines of business within Oracle with whom I collaborate. And we have put a lot of emphasis on that, through the solutions we promote and the specialisation we enable in our partners.”
David’s focus on these areas, he says, is due in a large part to the potential for growth in cloud. The new technology allows Oracle to target medium-sized markets that were previously less accessible, and to differentiate itself from competitors by offering cloud services others can’t. David explains, “In terms of the technologies cloud offers, its a new alternative way to consume technology, be it infrastructure and platform technology, or applications.”