Five Techies Who Could Fix Government’s Business Intelligence Chasm

Five Techies Who Could Fix Government’s Business Intelligence ChasmBy Eric Lundquist

Yes, Larry, “Mr. Oracle,” “Sail Around the World,” Ellison. He’s smart, made a huge business out of understanding databases, likes to mash up competing companies for breakfast and can out-nerd any DB argument put before him.

Who knows more about the nitty-gritty of databases than Ellison? Who is comfortable jousting with academic ivory-tower types as well as fast-charging entrepreneurs? That would be Mike Stonebraker. The list of his students who have gone on to create companies such as VMWare and Sybase makes Stonebraker a natural choice for smartening up the feds.

I mean, he invented business analytics when he took the helm at SAS Institute in 1976 and never looked back. He is outspoken, deep into understanding how to mine structured and unstructured data for useful information, and already lives on the East Coast in North Carolina, which would make the shuttle an easy ride. Oh, yeah, no need for the shuttle, he has a jet.

RSA (now part of EMC) has been in the data security business even before people knew they needed data security. At a dinner I was at recently with Coviello, he mentioned he was offered, but declined, a role in the federal cyber-security structure. Art, you don’t need to go full-time, just go down to D.C. and untangle the mess.

Steven Mills is a big honcho at IBM Software Group. If Ellison knows databases and Coviello knows security, Mills knows how to make innovation happen at a great big (Blue) company. That is no easy trick. Add in his DB background and ability to meld acquisitions into the Big Blue mold without driving out the brains and you’ve got someone who can talk bits and bytes and big BI strategy.