Oracle's Board-level CIO Mark Sunday Drives Innovation As the company's First purchaser

Mark Sunday has been the CIO of Oracle for ten years, and in that function, he has been the company’s first and very best consumer. because the CIO of a $ 38 billion firm, his know-how wants are reasonably complex, and he has been the first to make use of most of the firm’s products and services during the last decade. As such, his group bargains helpful information to colleagues as to what works smartly, and what requires further refinement. additionally Sunday has been a useful advisor to the corporate’s buyers, many of whom are also CIOs. He speaks no longer as a sales particular person, however as a peer, and can offer a unique depth of information tying collectively CIOs’ desires with Oracle’s options.

Sunday has additionally joined the ranks of board-level CIOs, having been on the boards of a couple of firms over the past decade and a 1/2. He has found the expertise valuable, because it has pushed him to build talents as an consultant in addition to those as an operator in his day-job. He additionally has drawn insights from each and every board-degree expertise to boost innovations he can leverage within Oracle itself.

(To take heed to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please discuss with this hyperlink. that is the 14^th article in the Board-level CIO collection. To read interviews with the CIOs of Cardinal health, P&G, Kroger, and FedEx, amongst others, please consult with this link. To read future articles within the collection, please click the “observe” link above.)

Peter high:  Mark, you are the Chief information Officer of Oracle, an organization that needs very little introduction, without a doubt. but for those who will not be so conversant in the role that you just specifically play inside the group, I wondered if you could discuss these areas which might be below your purview within Oracle.

Mark Sunday:  i’m responsible for the worldwide competing infrastructure and networking infrastructure and the way we service our finish customers in just about 100 international locations. My team is ready 50 robust, supporting those other people around the globe. everything from end consumer services up through a number of various things necessary for them to communicate, collaborate, and execute their jobs.

i’m complemented by means of our Oracle’s development group that additionally contributes to automating tactics throughout the company as they deploy applications.  they have got the responsibility to be the primary implementer of a few of the new products. So between what we do within my organization and my counterparts in development, we serve all of our 140,000+ end users.

excessive: Oracle is basically a technology company. i will be able to think about that being the CIO of a know-how firm has its blessings and its challenges. On the one hand you never must make the argument to your colleagues that expertise ought to be regarded as strategic, however then, however, you are surrounded via engineers and folks with deep technical expertise. can you talk slightly about culturally what that is like to be within the milieu of a big know-how group operating IT?

Sunday: neatly, to begin with i think it makes it very exciting for the workforce. So beyond the standard mission IT businesses have of making their organization function, whether it’s public or non-public sector simpler and turning in worth to their customers, we take on some extra roles.

if you add not best what we do to run our company but what we do via our managed club services, or our public cloud offerings, now we have via a ways the broadest and biggest implementation of Oracle technologies. So we’re by using a ways the largest influencer, we are the first adopter, and providing that we are in point of fact successful in those two roles, we’re positioned to be one of the best promoter. So those roles make it extra thrilling for myself, as well as for my staff to be a vital part of the services we provide.

Now the challenges are that we are the primary adopters. We use technologies very early. in fact, a few years ago we got a company, Bitzer cell. literally on the day of acquisition my team started working with them, asking ourselves, “what would it not take to install?” Then it was a part of Oracle cellular safety Suite. So we are integrally concerned, but because of this we also focus on very early releases.

I in my opinion enjoy that we work with neatly over 100,000 technologists which are arising with nice ideas. actually, for those who look at my organization there may not be an IT team on the planet that has an even bigger quiver of technology. everything that Oracle ever built plus the whole lot that got here out of the a hundred and twenty-plus acquisitions we have now made – all of that is available. possibly the biggest problem we’ve got is identifying not what to do but what not to do. just because we will does not imply we should. So that is in fact some of the biggest challenges: holding the focal point. as a result of there are such a large amount of opportunities given an organization with the aptitude that we now have.

high: You deliver up a number of different subject matters I would like to dive into a little bit more deeply, Mark, one of which is being that first adopter, that first customer of the corporate. can you talk a  bit about the way in which through which you and your workforce have interaction with those other complementary elements or components or divisions of Oracle as you are starting to test and use and integrate new solutions, and the best way during which you present that comments loop again to the group as to what’s working well, what should be amplified, what should be grew to become off, your individual impressions concerning the normal usefulness of what you are attempting and how that would possibly follow then to your friends as CIOs in different businesses?

Sunday:  We in fact become involved at numerous stages. One is that we now have built the potential and it’s a identified want, and it is something that used to be not potentially on a product road map that finds its method as a result of if Oracle wants it then it is possible that others will as smartly. in order that could be very early on the place we have an effect on prototype capabilities.

subsequent is more like the example I raised prior about Bitzer cellular where right up entrance we are engaged with them on “what does it take to take this know-how to be undertaking scale?” after which different issues, we are more or less at the back-finish: “hiya we now have bought this better mousetrap. Please go off and enforce it at Oracle and give us feedback on it.” with a view to get engaged in a variety of ranges. and then the feedback is in an instant with product construction relative to features, however the attention-grabbing factor is relative to beef up, on getting improve for merchandise that we have now carried out, we apply the identical path our buyers do. through the years now we have found it is a long way more practical than going around the methods which can be well-centered on how you handle massive scale firms. but also it makes sure that it provides us firsthand publicity: are these beef up methods effective for Oracle? hence they’d be effective for our clients as smartly.

excessive:  speaking of shoppers, many of your consumers are actually CIOs in IT departments of other major firms. i wonder how you work to guidance them and leverage your perch as Chief knowledge Officer to lend an empathetic ear and possibly share experiences in a different way than colleagues of yours who are in gross sales roles might be capable to because the group is either pitching know-how or in any other case speaking along with your peers in other companies about Oracle’s offering?

Sunday:  Peter, by means of a ways my favorite part of my job is my probability to go out and meet with trade leaders around the globe from completely different industries each private and non-private. if truth be told, there are a lot of companies i did not even be aware of existed.  So it has been a perfect facet. I do a variety of massive conversing situations. but really my candy spots are the round tables where now we have this interaction amongst a gaggle of my friends, and that i find that what I speak about has little to do with technology and far more to do with management and classes realized and the way do you drive actual price for the organization. actually, just a few years ago I took a lead from David Letterman and did a high 10 checklist and as I look again at them no longer a single one among them is set technology. once again, it’s all about leadership.

excessive: can you talk a bit bit about one of the crucial issues which might be strategic priorities to you as CIO of Oracle? What are some of the issues which are on your current highway map that you just and your crew are riding forward?

Sunday: initially, everyone is mindful that Oracle has made this in reality giant push into the cloud. while we have been cloud enablers and leveraged cloud applied sciences for well over a decade at Oracle, increasingly we are seeing our customers adopting device-as-a-service, platform-as-a-carrier, infrastructure-as-a-service, extra just lately data-as-a-service, and so job number one for us is to ensure we as an IT neighborhood are enabling our business as we let our consumers.

second of all, we’re having a look at “how will we realize a lot of the worth?” And identical to quite a lot of our clients have an incredible center of attention on their customers as well as their workers, we do as neatly. So by leveraging cloud, how do we strengthen the client expertise from the whole thing from how can we have interaction and nurture those customers, how we ultimately have a worth propitiation that is compelling to them, and how can we continue to grow that after we firstly do the deal? And in particular as you grow to be more cloud-centric, it isn’t as regards to closing the deal however it is incomes the industry every day.

1/3 is one thing that i’m very keen about: employee experience. we will be able to add possibly 25,000 new staff to Oracle all world wide this 12 months. What can we do to make that have as rich as that you can think of from their on-boarding, after which as soon as they are on-board, how will we see that they have got the person expertise, that they’re gaining insights? We facilitate the collaboration now not handiest inside their division, within their group, however all across Oracle and then extending into our ecosystem.

So purchaser expertise and worker expertise are two areas that i believe most every group, through specializing in them, can actually drive value to their enterprise.

excessive:  you could have served prior to now and existing on advisory boards or boards of directors of quite a few completely different businesses. this is an ambition for a lot of CIOs lately. That mentioned, boards had been tough for CIOs to break into most often. Please discuss just a little about your individual expertise and the way you at first acquired interested by advising firms and firms on their boards of advisers.

Sunday: well, to start with, when you return thru my profession, I spent 10 years at Motorola, which used to be an awfully big company in the ninety′s. I was once a strategic consumer to most of my suppliers. so that supplied a good chance to now not only interact and lend a hand direct the course of their products and services, however an excellent chance to accomplice with and research from friends.  but then moving on to Siebel in 1999, where Siebel is on the quilt of Fortune journal as some of the fastest rising companies in the usa after which promoting to numerous the key suppliers, whether it’s telecom or different expertise providers, it also provided that chance to be curious about advising the place these technologies want to go.

whereas I used to be at Siebel I was once requested to join the board of Altiris, which is a company that was once in system administration – in particular the personal computer – area. That was a great expertise over a couple of years to truly get a special standpoint. to begin with, it was once an organization of a distinct scale, but also the type of discussions that go on with the board room that might were somewhat different than what I had experienced. We not directly sold that company to Symantec after which I had some other board expertise with a private firm. That was much completely different because I started to get an appreciation for when a company is really within the embryonic stage. i’ve handiest labored for very huge corporations.

other issues, though, that i have found essential to take part now not only to lend a hand increase the community, but additionally you make sure that you are in contact with what is going on. For probably ten years i have been involved with the Utah know-how Council, which i am currently the Vice Chair, which is an trade consortia, and once once more it gives that chance to attach with different companies, extra on the CEO level as we are building the know-how industry in Utah, which I name residence. however extending beyond that, i think it is treasured to participate in non-profit boards because there may be so much opportunity for the experience one has as a CIO of having a look throughout a whole endeavor and how can know-how and ultimately digital transformation lend a hand take them to any other stage. So it has been numerous various things for me, and something that i have in point of fact loved. actually, i’ve just familiar an invite to join the board of a startup called FanAngel which is a crowdfunding firm for athletes. i’m excited because of what they’re doing not simplest in crowdfunding, but also the social components of the trade.

excessive: How has your experience with these various boards helped you as a CIO for your day job?

Sunday: You get appreciation for what’s in point of fact essential at board stage discussions. whether it’s a technique, whether it’s on the execution stage, you get more exposure to a broader set of metrics and indices, and key performance indications. just having that roughly particular look into another enterprise outside your individual can be treasured, however in particular the depth at which you are able to do as a board member.

Likewise, in other boards the place they’re a group or trade, it gives the opportunity to keep in mind what the challenges are, but additionally, possibly more importantly, what are the solutions that others are using. you will discover the place that you may deliver that back. i have found that most likely, often to the soreness of my team, that all of the exposure i’ve to other companies, whether or not it is discussions that i have with different IT leaders, or through collaborating in quite a lot of boards and other things, that i’m repeatedly coming back to them asking, “smartly, shouldn’t we believe this? have you ever considered that?  What if we did this?” That is without doubt one of the issues all and sundry as CIOs are actually chartered to do is understand what others are doing and notice the place it is sensible to use a few of these insights and learnings inside our own firms.

high: some of the things i feel I heard you say is that as one has alternatives to join the boards of non-income, for instance, that that’s a good way to examine concerning the dialog one typically has on the board degree as an enriching and pleasing enterprise onto itself, while additionally gaining the roughly expertise one may want to be able to proceed to discover other board alternatives on the related time. Is there different advice you would provide to CIOs who would possibly need to garner the varieties of experiences that may expose them more to most of these opportunities?

Sunday: completely. i believe the important thing things that boards will have to be interested by are “what’s our strategy?”  Now you could’t divorce technique from technology. So being able to really be at the coronary heart of that strategic decision and the way technology can play a role is imperative for being a CIO board member who aspires to be on boards.

a lot of how businesses function are tied to the effectiveness of their process and corresponding methods. As a CIO you will have nice exposure to what issues work and, quite frankly, what things don’t work. a few of the greatest most vital investments companies make now are around the expertise, round their approaches, round their programs. The extra exposure you could have, the more potential it’s important to speak on the strategic level, not the purposeful level.

i feel the evolving position of the CIO continues to place him higher. i’ve been doing this gig for a very long time, and during the primary three-fourths of my profession it was once about integrating and working technologies whether we sold, built, had somebody else do it, we pulled it out of the again closet. however technology from execution, operation, wires and boxes, was an important part of the function. more and more, as we transfer to cloud based solutions, stand on the shoulders of others, we are able to maneuver from this combine and function variation to more of an innovate and orchestrate edition the place we are able to deliver much more industry value extra unexpectedly.  after which that places us extra in a strategic mind-set, with the intention to discuss, i think to add value no longer handiest to our own enterprise, however so as to add to the communicate of other companies as neatly.

excessive:  Digital is a topic of growing passion in most corporations. What function do you see the CIO playing in in digital business?

Sunday: smartly, i believe first of all, as the CIO, it is your accountability to earn a seat at the table, after which as you earn a seat at the table there possibly is just not someone better within the group to pressure the innovation, drive the digital transformation agenda. That stated, company executive board did a study and one thing like 50% of the investment out of doors of IT was associated to innovation, whereas only 7% of the company it is in opposition to innovation. So, if that is a fact, and as so much as forty% of the total spent is outside the IT team, it then turns into incumbent on the CIO and IT group for a way do they power the most value from that. as opposed to taking a look at it as shadow IT, what do we do to embrace and add actual price? whether it is leveraging our talents around large scale operations, securities, which is more and more necessary. whether it’s around our potential to improve and operate. combine is another important side. So i believe first of all the CIO must earn a seat at the desk. He must play a key position in the digital transformation, however must embrace the other elements of the organization which can be making investments, and assist speed up, assist combine, and assist pull the organization collectively to pressure as much value from their IT investments as possible.

excessive: You mentioned security. How do you balance the danger mitigation that safety requires with the risk taking that revolutionary activities require?

Sunday: safety is without a doubt a very powerful problem, in truth, if I take a look at my finances over the previous few years, it is the space by which now we have grown our funding. while i feel we are in a a lot better position relative to the sorts of technologies and capabilities we’ve got, the threats have escalated at a quick percent as smartly.

identical to scope, time table and resources—risk is among the dimensions that now we have to have a look at whenever we take on a brand new pastime. the quantity of possibility we are able to take really is dependent upon the nature of what we’re looking to do. as an instance, if one thing is customer dealing with, has crucial Oracle purchaser or private data, we wish to put in numerous considerations than if we are attempting out a new mobile app that’s simply touching a selected area. We attempt to issue risk in as one of the dimensions equally important in balancing what we do and the way we deal with the tools, the scope, and the agenda.

concerning security, although, the chance place of business stories instantly to me. the best way we’re structured that includes safety, privacy, industry continuity, compliance, as well as danger and without a doubt has a seat on the desk on all strategic selections. additionally, as I pointed out, this plays an important role in balancing the chance versus the reward we get by using executing quick.

high: it is fascinating if one sees these major breaches that have met plenty of leading businesses and whole range of industries, whether or not it’s retail or monetary services and products or entertainment, the amount a given stock is hit is tied as ceaselessly to the response to the attack as it is to the attack itself. i think a part of it’s a growing acceptance among buyers and most of the people that unfortunately the unhealthy actors are very good, and if they’ve an organization of their points of interest, there are creative methods wherein to penetrate. So these firms which have plans in position if catastrophe strikes steadily return to business as average much faster. To what extent this is one thing you do with regards to scenario analysis or considering the totally different prospects and what the response will likely be?

Sunday: first of all, to an ideal extent, Oracle’s brand is tied to safety. Our very first clients had been in the intelligence trade. So it’s immensely vital not just for Oracle, however for the reason that so lots of our customers, whether they’re running in our environments, their information is part of our personal cloud, or we are providing toughen for his or her programs, we’ve a great deal of consumer knowledge that we are liable for as neatly. So nothing contains a higher precedence for us at Oracle than making sure the protection and privateness of ours and our shoppers’ data.

the thing that we take into consideration is, what can we do to forestall? Then the 2nd is, what can we do to detect? because there might be breaches. If there may be any area that we’re putting special center of attention on, it is mitigate. So that’s with the ability to respond incredibly quickly, extremely professionally, keep in mind what the breach is, unravel it as impulsively as possible, after which deal with all of the appropriate verbal exchange that’s required both internally and externally. So we take into accounts it truly every day of fighting, detecting, however truly, what are we going to do to mitigate? we’re efficient at responding, we are effective at communicating, and we are able to transfer forward as swiftly as that you can imagine.

high: you may have had the chance for virtually ten years now to work and collaborate with Larry Ellison, a legend within the know-how space. What has it been prefer to work with him?

Sunday: smartly, Larry, along with Safra (Catz) and Mark (Hurd), i’ve been incredibly honored—each single time i am in the room—simply the perception, the ability to make choices, the power to get beyond all the kinds of weeds and see the broader image and then come to a decision methods to move on.

I talked prior about my David Letterman prime 10 checklist, and as I depend down number 1 on my checklist is, and that i paraphrase, “each population has the government it deserves,” I imagine that each organization has the IT capability they deserve. With Larry, with Safra, with Mark, their skill to hastily determine a state of affairs, determine what makes most experience long term, make the decision, ensures that we are constantly re-engineering, optimizing, and then leveraging expertise to force value for our company by means of simplifying, centralizing, and standardizing, after which automating.

With Larry it has been nice to simply observe how he’s so ahead pondering and makes actually large choices that appear roughly thoughts-blowing, however alternatively, make a lot experience. And so we have now dealt loads with that as we now have continued to conform. when I joined we have been most certainly round 45,000 finish users; now we are 140,000. we have received over a hundred and twenty corporations. in order that skill to swiftly make decisions has been a supply of aggressive benefit.  in fact, we now have a tenet right here at Oracle: “you could get better from a poor resolution. there’s no restoration from indecision.”  And i think that’s what plenty of firms do is they stew they usually can not make the selections, or in the event that they do, components of the businesses—“neatly, they didn’t in point of fact imply me!”—or passive resistance. we’re very lucky to have a robust leadership staff that makes the decision, realizing that the overwhelming majority are going to be proper, but sometimes we want to make mid-direction corrections and then reply to that as neatly.

excessive: Mark, we have spoken about a lot of vital trends that are at the intersection of technology and broader industry worth. i wonder if there are any we ignored that are to your radar, any extra areas that you’re considering and taking a look to invest in, or excited—professionally or in my view—to look how those traits play out?

Sunday:  i believe the entire crowd-sourcing capability on the whole could be very intriguing as you seem to be throughout all kinds of industries. now we have seen how disruptive it has been in transportation and within the hospitality space, however we’re seeing it increasingly more it having an identical disruptions in different places. So whether it be crowd-sourcing, crowdfunding, i think that may be a very, very exciting space.

any other is the web of the whole thing, and as i go around i’m reasonably surprised at how many CIOs kind of decrease the impression they feel it’s going to have on their business or their business. And so, for me, i’m roughly looking to take the opposite aspect: every industry I encounter, are trying to think about how can this be impacted? What are the opportunities? What are the disruptors? What are the challengers that might be as a result this? So unquestionably the web of the whole lot is another house.

and then the third one that involves thoughts is really leveraging all the knowledge. we are Oracle only recently announced a knowledge as a carrier adaptation, but there is a lot implausible knowledge. with the ability to turn that into significant insight across every facet of the operation—now not  simply what we often think about with  our customers and social information and so on—but also what we are able to do to make stronger our operations, enhance our supply chain, beef up our ecosystem. So knowledge is some other space that i think, whereas there has been a good deal of talk, i believe there is a nice bit more worth that is going to be pushed out of the next a couple of years.

Peter high is President of Metis technique, a business and IT advisory firm. His latest book, imposing World category IT strategy, has simply been launched by Wiley Press/Jossey-Bass. he is additionally the author of World classification IT: Why businesses succeed When IT Triumphs. Peter moderates the discussion board on World type IT podcast sequence. observe him on Twitter @WorldClassIT.