My journey

1985 – 1994

The beginnings

It all started in 1985, during military service in Mantua: I designed internal applications, trained officers to use computers and built a small e-learning platform for self-paced courses.

Then, while studying in Milan, I worked as a freelancer: software analysis and development in Basic, Pascal and C, articles for technical magazines, and classes on Oracle RDBMS and SQL at the university’s Computer Science department. I also conceived and wrote my own software and sold it to Italian publishers. From 1991 came bigger projects, including a European research project on hypermedia environments, where I designed the architecture and worked on data integration and markup languages such as SGML and HTML.

1994 – 1996

Telesoft: software in production

At Telesoft, a company later merged into Telecom Italia (today TIM), I first worked as an analyst and developer of telecom network management software, then as technical support team lead for an SDH network management system.

The system was installed at every regional site: test, pre-production and production environments, manuals, training for users and administrators, support by phone and on site. It was my school of reality: software is worth something when it works in production, every day.

1996 – 2002

The early years at Oracle

On my first day at Oracle, December 16, 1996, the office was empty: everyone was at the Christmas party. Then things moved fast. I built and led the technical presales team for Oracle Applications, hiring and training every member, and worked on more than 500 opportunities with over 300 customers.

I pitched the idea of a “one-hour install” to the US development team: it became Rapid Install, an official product feature. During those years I took part in Oracle events in San Francisco, Amsterdam and Milan and was a member of the Global Application Technology Steering Committee.

2002 – 2006

A role that didn’t exist

In 2002 I launched a role at Oracle Italy that didn’t yet exist, in Italy or in EMEA: Customer Success. The goal was easy to state and hard to achieve: help customers take Oracle Applications into production and turn them into active references. Three critical projects became references within eight months; in total I brought 14 to success. The initiative worked so well that it was adopted first across all EMEA countries and then worldwide.

At the same time I created the Applications Partners Lab Program: about 100 events, 140 training days and more than 1,300 participants from sales and implementation partners.

2006 – 2015

The Master Data Management years

In 2006 I joined the EMEA Master Data Management team, when the solution in Europe still had to be built from scratch. Over nine years I worked on more than 700 opportunities with over 600 customers in more than 40 countries, from the public sector to luxury, from utilities to oil & gas. Together with industry colleagues we built an MDM proposition for more than 26 industries, with business cases and ROI models.

It was also the era of travel. A lot of work happened at 30,000 feet, with slides reviewed and demos rehearsed before landing, and hotel rooms became a second home. Once I caught the first morning flight to Rome and ended up in Genoa, then took a bus back to Milan without ever reaching my destination.

2015 – 2022

The Center of Excellence and “Mr. Data”

From 2015 I was the regional lead for Customer Data Management and Data Governance in the Western Europe CX Center of Excellence, and from 2018 also for Customer Data Platforms and GDPR. My job was to build awareness inside and outside the company and to support the most complex opportunities.

2018 was the year of GDPR: organizations in every industry wanted to understand what was really changing for their data, and I found myself explaining it to customers, partners and colleagues across EMEA. One of my proposals was recognized as Idea of the Quarter. And it was during those years that my colleagues started calling me “Mr. Data”.

2022 – 2026

Oracle Unity: from the field to the product

In May 2022 I moved from the field to product development, joining the product management team of Oracle Unity, Oracle’s Customer Data Platform. My role had two sides: on the outbound side I covered Europe, the Middle East and Africa, working with customers, prospects and partners to understand what worked and what was missing; on the inbound side I worked on the strategy for verticalizing the platform for different industries.

I built the industry demos and acted as product sponsor for several key projects in EMEA. In September 2024 I was promoted to Product Strategy Architect, the highest level for an individual contributor. In my final months I designed AI agents and agentic applications with Oracle Fusion AI Agent Studio: the natural destination of years spent bringing order to data.

2026 – present

Independent

On June 30, 2026, the Oracle chapter closed after almost thirty years. Since July I have been working independently, combining three activities that feed each other: senior advisory, professional training and technical writing.

The question that ties them together is always the same: how do the promises of data and artificial intelligence connect with the reality of projects, budgets and people? I work on data strategy, architectural and organizational choices and the assessment of complex initiatives: finding the weak spots, challenging assumptions and mapping a practical path from objectives to measurable results.

And there is more on the way. I’ll talk about it in December.