Where there is a Willis, there is a way

Willis has more than 25 years’ IT industry experience, most recently as vice president of Citrix’s Asia-Pacific operations since 2008, after joining the networking firm in 2005. During HIS time with Citrix, he was responsible for revenue and profitability across the region as well as managing 400 people and a product solutions set spanning a broad portfolio of markets and customer segments. 

Before Citrix, Willis held executive Vice President roles at both Nortel Networks and IP Networks during which time he was responsible for market development and sales acceleration of services and solutions.

He will be responsible for the company’s operations and growth in Australia and New Zealand with a focus on continuing to transform Oracle’s business to the cloud, accelerating its market penetration across all product lines and driving a continued focus on providing a great customer experience.

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Oracle seems to be enjoying a resurgence after this week’s US$9.3 billion acquisition of NetSuite, a significant cloud computing company supplying ERP, CRM, E-Commerce and Professional services automation largely as a SaaS (software as a service).

The acquisition was no surprise – the companies have enjoyed a long and close relationship since NetSuite was established in 1998 with initial backing of US$125 million from Oracle’s Larry Ellison who holds nearly 40% of the stock. Some of NetSuite’s software relies on database software licensed from Oracle.

The acquisition gives Oracle a growing company with a great customer base, especially in the medium enterprise space. While NetSuite was seen as a “challenger” to Oracle, the reality is that there is not a lot of software or customer overlap presenting lots of cross-selling opportunities.

Expect big things from Oracle as it starts to compete head on with Amazon (AWS), Google and Microsoft in the cloud space.