Vishal Sikka (born May, 1967) is the Founder and CEO of Vianai, former CTO of

SAP AG Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is ...

, and former CEO of

Infosys Infosys Limited is an Indian multinational information technology company that provides business consulting, information technology and outsourcing services. The company was founded in Pune and is headquartered in Bangalore. Infosys is the s ...

. He currently also serves on Oracle's board of directors, the supervisory board of the BMW Group and as an advisor to the Stanford Institute of Human-Centered AI. His current endeavor, Vianai, is a startup based in the San Francisco Bay Area that provides advanced technological software and services in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to large companies around the world. Prior, Sikka served as Executive Vice Chairman, CEO, and MD of

. On 18 August 2017 he stepped down as

managing director A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

. He left his role as Executive Vice Chairman of Infosys on 24 August 2017 when

Nandan Nilekani Nandan Mohanrao Nilekani (born 2 June 1955) is an Indian entrepreneur. He co-founded Infosys and is the non-executive chairman of Infosys replacing R Seshasayee and Ravi Venkatesan, who were the co-chairs of the board, on 24 August 2017. After t ...

was appointed as the new Non Executive Chairman of the Board. Prior to joining Infosys, Sikka was a member of the Executive Board and the Global Managing Board of

, leading all

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separ ...

products and innovation globally. In his 12 years at SAP, Sikka led SAP's product portfolio including the in-memory platform,

SAP HANA SAP HANA (HochleistungsANalyseAnwendung or High-performance ANalytic Application) is an in-memory, column-oriented, relational database management system developed and marketed by SAP SE. Its primary function as the software running a databa ...

, and all its applications, cloud and technology solutions. Sikka left the SAP board in May 2014, and was announced as CEO and MD of

on 12 June 2014. After three years at Infosys, Sikka left on 18 August 2017. ''

India Today ''India Today'' is a weekly Indian English-language news magazine published by Living Media India Limited. It is the most widely circulated magazine in India, with a readership of close to 8 million. In 2014, ''India Today'' launched a new o ...

'' magazine ranked him #32nd in India's 50 Most powerful people of 2017 list.

Early life and career

Sikka was born in

Shajapur Shajapur is a town in Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh state in west-central India. It is the headquarters of Shajapur district. Geography Shajapur is located at . It has an average elevation of . The highest peak is known as Bhairo Dungri. ...

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, and Rewa being the other major cities. Madhya Pradesh is the seco ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

to Punjabi parents - an officer in the

Indian Railways Indian Railways (IR) is a statutory body under the ownership of Ministry of Railways, Government of India that operates India's national railway system. It manages the fourth largest national railway system in the world by size, with a tota ...

and a teacher. His family moved to

Vadodara Vadodara (), also known as Baroda, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It serves as the administrative headquarters of the Vadodara district and is situated on the banks of the Vishwamitri River, from the state capita ...

Gujarat Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...

when he was six. He did his schooling in Kendriya Vidyalaya, Rajkot and thereafter at a

Christian school A Christian school is a school run on Christian principles or by a Christian organization. The nature of Christian schools varies enormously from country to country, according to the religious, educational, and political cultures. In some count ...

named Rosary High School (Vadodara). Sikka joined the bachelors in Computer Engineering course at

Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, formerly Baroda College, is a public university in the city of Vadodara, in Gujarat state, India. Originally established as a college in 1881, it became a university in 1949 after the independence of ...

, which he discontinued to go to Syracuse University in New York where he earned a

B.S. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

in Computer Science. He completed his Ph.D. in 1996 from Stanford University. His dissertation was titled ''Integrating Specialized Procedures into Proof Systems'' and his thesis advisor was

Michael Genesereth Michael Genesereth (born 1948) is an American logician and computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computatio ...

Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, ...

, one of the fathers of AI, wrote a recommendation letter for Sikka for his admission to Stanford. John McCarthy, also known as a father of AI, was one of Sikka's teachers. After a brief stint at

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...

's research labs, Sikka founded iBrain which competed at the time with

Business Objects A business object is an entity within a multi-tiered software application that works in conjunction with the data access and business logic layers to transport data. For example, a "Manager" would be a ''business object'' where its attributes c ...

. iBrain was acquired by PatternRX, Inc. His second startup, Bodha.com, focused on developing technology for non-invasive, service-based integration of enterprise applications and information. Sikka joined

Peregrine Systems Peregrine Systems, Inc. was an enterprise software company, founded in 1981, that sold enterprise asset management, change management, and ITIL-based IT service management software. Following an accounting scandal and bankruptcy in 2003, Peregri ...

as their area Vice-President for Platform Technologies, responsible for application development and integration technologies and architecture, following their acquisition of Bodha.com.

SAP

Sikka joined SAP in 2002 to head up the advanced technology group responsible for strategic innovative projects. Later he was promoted to Senior Vice President of Architecture and Chief Software Architect, responsible for the road map and the direction for the architecture of SAP products and infrastructure. In April 2007, Sikka was named SAP's first-ever CTO, reporting to then CEO

Henning Kagermann Henning Kagermann (born 12 July 1947) is a German physicist and businessman. He was the former chairman of the Executive Board and Chief Executive Officer of SAP. Early life and education Born in Braunschweig, Kagermann studied physics in Bra ...

. At the time, SAP spokesman Frank Hartmann stated that SAP felt it needed a CTO to oversee some broad changes that were under way at the company, including its renewed focus on the mid-market, the introduction of new on-demand products, and the continued roll out of NetWeaver and its SOA strategy. In the wake of Léo Apotheker's resignation from the executive board in 2010 to become CEO of HP, Sikka was named to a newly reconstituted board, along with new co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe. On 4 May 2014, Sikka announced his departure from SAP for personal reasons before being named leader of Infosys.

Infosys

On 12 June 2014, Infosys Ltd, India's second-largest IT services exporter, named Sikka as its Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Sikka took over from then-CEO S.D. Shibulal, one of Infosys' founders, on 1 August. He was inducted as a whole-time director of the Board and CEO & MD (Designate) of Infosys on 14 June. His annual compensation was set at $13 million and stock options worth $9million. Vishal Sikka resigned from Infosys as MD and CEO on 18 August 2017. He was replaced by Pravin Rao on 24 August 2017.

Vianai

In 2019, Sikka founded Vianai, an AI company, with $50 million in initial funding and advisors that included Indra Nooyi, John Etchemendy, Divesh Makan, Sebastian Thrun, and Alan Kay. In a demo of the platform on Sept. 17, 2019, at Oracle Open World, Sikka revealed the company had created its own programming language to enable more developers and companies to utilize AI and Machine Learning techniques.

Oracle

Oracle this week announced (December 2019) that Dr. Vishal Sikka, has been named to Oracle's Board of Directors. Before starting Vianai, Vishal was a top executive at SAP and the CEO of Infosys. As a part of the board, he would be providing strategic vision and expert advice on

Oracle Cloud Oracle Cloud is a cloud computing service offered by Oracle Corporation providing servers, storage, network, applications and services through a global network of Oracle Corporation managed data centers. The company allows ...

and its services.

Additional background

In 2008, Sikka joined the executive board of the

CTO Forum The ''CTO Forum'' is an IT magazine for India CTO community published fortnightly by 9.9 Media. It is targeted at technology professionals in enterprises. The company, 9.9 Media, also holds a well-known event called The CTO Forum, a summit. The ...

, an influential industry non-profit community. The same year, he articulated his vision of 'Timeless Software' – software that does not cause disruption to the user as technology landscapes evolve – and proposed that this be a key pillar of SAP's future development efforts. He has expressed his admiration for industry visionary

Alan Kay Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) published by the Association for Computing Machinery 2012 is an American computer scientist best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) d ...

and contributed a chapter to Points of View, a tribute on Kay's 70th birthday. Sikka served as a member of the advisory board for Coghead from 2006 to 2009 along with industry influencers Steve Bourne,

Guy Kawasaki Guy Kawasaki (born August 30, 1954) is an American marketing specialist, author, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He popularized ...

and John Seely Brown. Coghead was acquired by SAP in 2009. Sikka has been an influential advocate for HANA, SAP's new

in-memory database An in-memory database (IMDB, or main memory database system (MMDB) or memory resident database) is a database management system that primarily relies on main memory for computer data storage. It is contrasted with database management systems that e ...

technology. He spearheaded the development of HANA since his appointment as CTO with support from

Hasso Plattner Hasso Plattner (born 21 January 1944) is a German businessman. A co-founder of SAP SE software company, he has been chairman of the supervisory board of SAP SE since May 2003. As of August 2020, ''Forbes'' reported that he possessed a net worth ...

. Since assuming his seat on the executive board, he has spoken on multiple occasions about the potential of HANA as a breakthrough in the

enterprise software Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software (EAS), is computer software used to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than individual users. Such organizations include businesses, schools, interest-based user groups, ...

space.

References

External links

Bloomberg Profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sikka, Vishal Living people 1967 births American technology chief executives SAP SE people Stanford University alumni Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science alumni Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda alumni American chief technology officers Infosys people