Albert Triola is Senior Vice President of Oracle, and heads the Support Renewal Sales area in EMEA and the general management of Spain. Telecommunications Engineer from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, he has more than 30 years of experience in the areas of Sales, Marketing, Business Development or Alliances.
How would you define the current moment in technology?
Technology has gone from being accessible only to large companies to being able to be used by everyone. The cloud has democratized technology, so the technology that RedBull uses with Oracle to simulate a race can be used by a pig farm or any type of company. Our job is to disseminate the possibilities that technology offers. The limit is only in our head.
Does the terminology sector sin that it is difficult to land?
The technology is not obvious either, but it evolves to remove that complexity. The AI tools we offer allow the financial report, which is somewhat complex, to no longer be written by the financial director. Or that employee evaluation is done automatically. Area managers contribute their point of view, but without having to perform repetitive tasks. You don't have to be an engineer or computer scientist to access and use this technology. You just have to have curiosity and attitude.
Is your AI available in the Spanish cloud zone?
Yes of course. In Spain we have two clouds, one public that we announced more than a year and a half ago, and the second, sovereign (separated from the public to provide service based on the regulation so that this data does not leave the European Union), which we announced ago few months and which is for the most highly regulated clients, such as the public sector, banks and others.
How are these two clouds doing?
The client decides which cloud to access. The only thing we do is look at consumption. With this data we plan an expansion.
Is an expansion of the regions planned in Spain?
Sure. We continue working with Telefónica and the expansion will be with them. But it would be very risky to give dates. A cloud is a great opportunity for everyone, but companies have to change their ways of working. The more curious they are to discover the functionalities that technology provides them, the more it will help them a lot in their day-to-day management.
How has AI affected you in your role as director of Oracle?
As a user, I use the same tools as our clients for resource management. I have 600 people under my supervision. My daily life has changed. Part of my job is to be able to tell people about the possibilities of technology. I have to learn, study every day to understand how to explain it to businessmen. It doesn't matter whether you are a telecom, IT, an SME, a large or small startup and the sector: it is a great opportunity that has no limits. The capacity of the cloud, with artificial intelligence, LLM models and all these new words that we invented, depends on each person's imagination.
What is more challenging: this change in AI or assuming leadership of a company in a pandemic?
The two are very similar. The challenge for a person with a role like mine is how to be able to tell the stories to clients and the market, so that they see that this opportunity is unique, encourage them not to go slow, to go fast in these changes, to these transformations, to those who are curious to discover what all these tools can give them. That's the beautiful and challenging part. I would like to retire saying “the things we have achieved.”
He is a telecommunications engineer. Did you imagine how far technology could go?
No not at all. Now the same thing happens. We are not aware of the capabilities that technology has and what we can achieve.
Profile
An engineer who likes to tell stories
He has been in positions of responsibility for more than 20 years. She assures that her first positions as a pre-seller helped her a lot in her professional development. «It helped me a lot to see how to tell engaging stories. People buy stories. “You don't buy three kilos of artificial intelligence,” she says, defending creativity and the importance of “power skills” (previously called soft skills), such as knowing how to listen. “It's very difficult to plan your career, but you have to plan where you want to go.”