Tech CEOs spend hours in the public eye—at industry events, on earnings calls, engaging the media, communicating via our social channels. Then it’s back to the 24/7 grind in pursuit of innovation and market leadership, a responsibility that is as challenging as it is exciting.
I worked my way up the management learning curve—at organizations including Intuit, Symantec, McKinsey and Infosys—before taking over as Informatica’s CEO five years ago. I’ve had to think differently about a range of issues: how to nurture talent amid the rise of artificial intelligence, how to make buck-stops-here decisions, and how to drive differentiation and value relentlessly.
Business and technology leaders everywhere must navigate a complex global environment, and that’s force multiplied for tech CEOs due to the pace of change and competition from every direction. The list of “big challenges” identified by Forbes Coaches Council includes AI adoption strategies and ethics, navigating regulatory changes and keeping up with tech disruption. I would add a few of my own: capitalizing on generative AI and agentic AI; reskilling employees in this new world of AI coworkers; and establishing trusted AI with high-quality data.
No one said being a tech CEO would be easy—nor that the dynamics would keep changing as we’re at it.
Getting ahead of the curve
Management decisions are seldom black and white. One of the toughest decisions I had to make in my early days at the helm of Informatica involved product timing — when to make a full, irreversible commitment from on-premises data management to a cloud-first model. Our on-prem products were still strong but it was clear to me that, going forward, a growing percentage of data workloads would be migrating to the cloud. We needed to be ahead of the curve.
After discussing the pros and cons with the Board of Directors and customers, I decided to accelerate our transition to the cloud by 18 months. It meant giving up short-term demand for the prospect of a long-term advantage, but it turned out to be the right call. Not only did it give our customers clarity for their own infrastructure planning, but the timing meant we were well positioned for enterprise AI.
This is the gray area of decision-making that accounts for much of what I do as coach, colleague and the person with the final say in matters. Sometimes the choices are obvious—making a job offer to a sought-after recruit or investing in projects with high ROI—but usually they’re not so binary. In product development, for example, it’s not unusual for a software product to represent years of investment, but we’re always looking ahead. So, we must balance the installed base and the future base.
That was the case in our shift from on-premises systems to the cloud, and now to GenAI and agentic AI. We must help customers protect years of investment in legacy technologies while moving at their own pace to what’s next. This explains why the word transformation is part of so many executive conversations.
I sum it up this way: There’s no long term without short-term performance, and no short-term advantage without long-term planning. You need both here-and-now execution and bold vision. At Informatica, our next step on this path is to join forces with Salesforce through a definitive $8 billion agreement that’s due to close early in Salesforce’s fiscal 2027, subject to regulatory approval.
Strategic moves guided by instincts
CEOs must sometimes make big strategic bets. It’s part of the job description.
For me, that meant going all-in as a cloud platform provider with fully integrated services. That was a huge change from our company’s heritage selling standalone products into a best-of-breed ecosystem. It meant convincing customers to make our platform a strategic layer in their modern tech stacks.
Fortunately, that strategy is working well because business leaders have come to realize that data management is essential to the success of their AI initiatives. As a result, Informatica’s cloud subscription annual recurring revenue (ARR) increased 28% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2025, to $901 million.
The numbers — ARR, cloud transactions, net retention rate and so on — are essential for decision-making, but I also rely on my instincts. That’s a common trait among CEOs. Tim Cook, Howard Schultz and Richard Branson are just a few of the business leaders who have been known to make “gut” decisions.
Of course, a CEO’s resolve on next steps does not always lead to universally popular decisions. But if we are guided by what’s best for employees, customers and shareholders, the odds of getting it right are in everyone’s favor.
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