BlueKai Founder Omar Tawakol Parts Ways With Oracle, Datalogix’s Eric Roza Steps Up

BlueKai co-founder and CEO Omar Tawakol will leave his post as general manager and SVP of Oracle Data Cloud on Friday, two and a half years after Oracle acquired his company.

Eric Roza, the former CEO of Datalogix and current co-SVP of Oracle Data Cloud, will step up to lead the group, according to Tawakol.

“I leave the ODC in great hands (four seasoned CEOs are in the ODC team led by Eric Roza the ex-CEO of Datalogix),” Tawakol wrote in a Facebook post.

Oracle would not immediately confirm the appointment to AdExchanger.

Sources tell AdExchanger Roza is the natural successor to lead Oracle Data Cloud.

Datalogix, because of its offline data, comprises the bulk of the power behind Oracle’s data-as-a-service offering. BlueKai’s data exchange and its data management platform were split, and the latter became part of the Oracle Marketing Cloud.

The relative importance of each company is also reflected in the purchase price. Oracle bought BlueKai for between $350 million and $400 million and purchased Datalogix for $1.2 billion.

Tawakol follows Kevin Akeroyd as the second major executive to leave his position heading up one of Oracle’s marketing product family.

Akeroyd served as SVP and GM of Oracle Marketing Cloud until August, when he left to become CEO of Cision. Marketing Cloud and Data Cloud were closely entwined, as the former housed the BlueKai data management platform (since renamed Oracle DMP).

Tawakol’s next post doesn’t seem to be in advertising. He will join the startup WorkFit on Monday, he said in a Facebook post. The company builds AI assistants for enterprise customers.

While both Datalogix and BlueKai served the ad tech and mar tech communities, Oracle has more expansive visions for Data Cloud, pushing its capabilities to other lines of business, like CRM and ERP.

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Similarly, Akeroyd’s successor at Oracle Marketing Cloud, Laura Ipsen, indicated that the marketing stack would be used, in part, for Oracle to gain inroads in selling nonmarketing technologies.

Update: This story has been changed to remove references to the perception of BlueKai’s technology in the marketplace. We’ll address those issues in a Friday followup story, and will post the link here when that piece goes live.

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