Yes, RG was a hold over from the old on prem world of sales. He was good in that context, but the whole public cloud thing passed him by. He was over his head and a fish out of water when it came to cloud.
The only reason AWS is hiring him is because of his supposed “cred” with Fortune 500 customers, and AWS wants to build their enterprise sales organization with large companies.
One of the same reasons that Google hired TK ... to try to increase their penetration into large global accounts.
These executives from the old on-prem world are too old and set in their ways, and don’t understand that the sales model with cloud is different than the old world of on prem. Developers largely make the decisions when it comes to cloud, not central IT.
It was a great thing for Oracle to lose executives like TK, T—d, DD and RG (and marketing guys like Steve Dadweeb) because it cleared out the old on-prem enterprise sales sclerosis and cobwebs, and made way for the rise of AK, CM, DJ and their organically built OCI team, who grew up with cloud and get it and how to market and sell to cloud centric customers.
With every departure of the likes of a Dadweeb or RG, the transformation of Oracle to a more cloud company progresses, and O’s ability to execute goes up.
DD and RG were major impediments to Oracle’s transformation, as has been said.
O’s “loss” of RG is AWS’ “gain” ... LOL. RG is not going to last even two years in AWS culture. He doesn’t have what it takes to survive in a hard-core culture like AWA.