Absolutely committed to integrity, transparency of our ops: Top Oracle exec

Speaking in the context of recent charges against the firm, Garrett IIg, president, Oracle Japan and Asia Pacific, says compliance training among employees has become more aggressive recently

Garrett Ilg, president, Oracle Japan and Asia Pacific, stresses integrity and transparency of the company’s operations shall always be paramount. His remarks come in light of the recent charges against Oracle; it had to pay $23 million to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In an interview with Shivani Shinde, Garrett explains that compliance training for employees has become aggressive in the recent past. He also talks about the fast-growing demand for Oracle cloud solutions in India, role of the development centre, and changing culture at the company. Edited excerpts…

It is for the second time that Oracle has found itself embroiled in a corruption issue, which it has settled for a fee. What are your comments on the issue and what are the next steps?

It is not something for which I have every piece of information. But what I can tell you is that we take such issues seriously. We are absolutely committed to both integrity and transparency of our operations. We have internal training programmes that are managed and measured, for all our employees around the world, and all of us have to go through this training as part of our compliance. We have become more aggressive over the past year on this.

From my leadership standpoint, there is absolutely no exception allowed and everything must be completely transparent, compliant, and within our policy and regulations, of both Oracle company and the environment that we operate in. And to that extent, it always takes precedence over any type of deal or opportunity, or transaction. There is no way that would ever be valued more than the integrity of the company and the respect we have for our customers and partners. With regards to this issue, we have amplified our training to make sure that we've got every single person registered and pass the compliance course.

We are not just making awareness but we're educating and making sure we reinforce that education within the company.

…has it impacted the business in any way?

It’s definitely a topic of conversation. We have been asked questions about it and we have addressed it with the exact same points that I have shared here.

It has not impacted our business. I think a lot of our customers understand that a few bad deeds by someone don't mean the whole company is bad and our job is to make sure that never any deed like that occur. We are responding and taking action on the issue. The fact that we are addressing it, I think, will allow us to continue to pursue opportunities in front of us.

How is the Indian market in terms of spends on cloud and how is it growing for Oracle?

India is a very strategic region for Oracle. And unlike a lot of companies, India is very, very closely connected to the top leadership at Oracle. India has its own visibility within the company and there’s a reason for that. Even as I took over this role two-and-a-half years ago, I spoke to Safra (Catz, CEO) and I said we really do have some tremendous opportunities. India is a market that is innovating; it's got a middle class that is evolving rapidly, probably faster than anywhere else in the world. It's got a penchant towards innovation and the digital infrastructure is absolutely exploding.

What you see is this exponential expansion of data, the velocity of actual communications and infrastructure that's creating not just more data but more transactions, too, and then the dependency and scale of the Indian economy in the ambitions around India that are driving this incredible thirst to have infrastructure and modernized move to the cloud and become more efficient. This is powering Oracle in India as well.

How significant is India?

Very significant. We have two data regions in India (Mumbai & Hyderabad) and we are working on a third one with Airtel. Both our data regions are compliant with MeitY. Oracle India is a global enterprise for Oracle. We do so much of our global product development, support, consulting, customer service, etc. We have all facets of a global enterprise existing in Oracle India. And one of the things that it's really important to acknowledge is that the innovation is not just for our JPAC environment but all other geographies utilise expertise available in Oracle India. As a result, we're expanding in all directions, we've got more product capability, innovation capability, and cloud infrastructure and development. 

How is the slowdown impacting Oracle?

Global economies are actually very uneven right now. Each country is stuck in its own issues, either due to inflationary pressure or currency fluctuation and many are still facing business disruption, particularly due to post-Covid supply chain issues which are still lingering, and of course the geopolitical challenges. What I do see is that there is a consistent but albeit measured demand for technology. The reason being technology is still seen as the common denominator for a solution for the go-forward strategy for the enterprises. Technology and transformation isn't just nice; it's literally a mission-critical strategy to organise the enterprise around the requirements of speed, nimbleness, and security.

Will it be fair to assume that budget spends will be impacted in pockets or on a sector basis?

Every company is looking at its operations and technology is definitely one of the verticals that are under the microscope. And things need to tighten up. Publicly traded companies have to be accountable to their shareholders and they have got to ensure that they're efficient. I think you're seeing some of that. We have seen some of the recent news about how companies have right sized after they overestimated the opportunity landscape of their business.

One of the things that you said as you took this role was to relook at the culture within the company, as well as how it deals with customers and partners. What changes did you incorporate?

One of the things that I believe and I have all done this many times over my career, is that after you move away from the bits and the bytes, and the product, and the features and the price and the contract, what you recognise is that business is still about people. 

One of the opportunities I think with Oracle is that we've always had superior technology in this company. But you have to bring people together, and be collaborative. This has become all the more important as we come out of Covid. The culture that I want to drive is about not just telling people what we do, but we're going to listen to what they need. We're going to be good at partnering because ecosystems create outcomes, not individual points solutions. So the culture is coming together as one Oracle.