Channel Executive Rauline Ochs Leaving Oracle
Oracle was reported to be interviewing candidates to fill Ochs' position of senior vice president of the company's North America Alliance and Channels organization, but has not yet named a successor.
Ochs is leaving effective next Monday to join Safeco, a Fortune 500 company and large Oracle customer. Safeco is a $6.3 billion insurance giant that sells through a network of some 9,000 agents. Ochs will serve as the company's executive vice president of sales and marketing, overseeing the insurance company's vast sales network and its marketing initiatives. She will be reporting to the company's CEO Paula Reynolds.
"I am personally sad to leave Oracle, the industry and partners," Ochs said in a phone interview Friday. The seasoned channel executive said leaving Oracle and the channel was a difficult decision that left her sleepless. Because Ochs is leaving to join a large Oracle customer, she has been working closely with management to find a replacement.
"We have phenomenal executive support at Oracle and have a great [partner] team that has been in place for the past five years," Ochs said. She expects Oracle's commitment to the channel to continue and gain momentum throughout 2008.
Ochs was named the 2007 Channel Executive of the Year by CMP Technology's Channel Group. Channel partners credit Ochs with changing Oracle's culture that emphasized aggressive direct sales -" sometimes at the expense of its solution provider partners. Last year Ochs' efforts were rewarded by the high marks Oracle received in channel partner support and loyalty in VARBusiness Magazine's Annual Report Card survey -- a major turnaround from the dismal scores Oracle received in previous years.
Channel partners were dismayed at the news of Ochs' departure. "I'm disappointed to hear that," said Hal Hawisher, principal at Baytree Associates, a Charlotte, N.C.-based Oracle solution provider partner. He ascribed many of the positive changes in Oracle's channel efforts to Ochs. "Hopefully they'll continue with the changes she was trying to implement." But he said Baytree would continue working with Oracle despite the loss of Ochs. "We worked with Oracle before and we'll work with them after," he said.
Ochs joined Oracle in 2003 from BEA Systems where she worked as senior vice president of worldwide alliances. Before that she worked at IBM for 15 years in various sales and marketing posts, including vice president of channel sales for the IBM Americas Software organization.
It is rare for such a top-level channel executive to jump to a large customer. Top channel executives often move inside their organizations, taking over product divisions as HP's John Thompson did last year or take over broad sales responsibility as Frank Vitagliano did when he joined Juniper after retiring from IBM.
Ochs takes with her a wealth of channel knowledge and insight that many IT companies would have paid handsomely for. Her experience at IBM, BEA and finally Oracle was colored by efforts to turn companies or huge divisions that were focused on direct sales into ones that leveraged the channel to scale their businesses. In doing so, she had to fight and win political battles internally and secure the trust of leery VARs.