About

Gustavo G. Mármol Alioto has been at the helm of the Chilean legal department of Oracle since its foundation in January 2014. He currently holds a dual role of head of the commercial legal department in the country as well as the legal privacy and security head for the Latin American region. Apart from creating the legal department in Santiago, Mármol’s time at the multinational information technology company has been defined by his efforts to ensure that contributions and major changes implemented by the department are reflected in concrete results. This dedication to delivery has helped Mármol to foster an ‘excellent relationship with senior management and local CEO’. His approach to the in-house lawyer’s role is one of pragmatism and respect: ‘As an in-house counsel I have always believed that you need to [possess] seasoned legal and internal rules, knowledge and excellent skills and relationship management in order to establish, maintain, instil and hold others accountable for standards of integrity, trustworthiness and respect consistent with the standards of the corporation’. Since Mármol joined Oracle from Sun Microsystems in Argentina, following its acquisition in 2010, he has become even more of an expert in privacy, software licensing (commercial and open source) and services cloud subscription models. As well as selling to businesses and consumers, Oracle also distributes products to the government. According to Mármol this can pose lawyers with another level of intricacy to manage, even on top of the different licensing models the company has: ‘There are normative rules, for example, for the distribution of products for the government sector, discount rules applicable to the private sector and public, ethics and compliance rules for distributors of products and services, suppliers and employees and managers, rules of exports control, etcetera’. With his experience, Mármol has become respected in the industry, and has often spoken about his desire to see the Chilean and Latin American technology markets develop alongside global markets. ‘In Latin America, and with respect to privacy and security regulations, I would expect to see a rapid adaptation to the new rules that will come into force next year in the EU, that for sure will impact the cloud computing market’, he says.