Software Veteran Led Development of Taleo Cloud Platform Acquired by Oracle; Senior Leaders from Media and Technology Continue to Join Centro
San Francisco – Centro (www.centro.net), a provider of software and services for modern media agencies, today announced the appointment of Michael Radovancevich as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Radovancevich was Group Vice President of Development at Oracle, transitioning into the role after serving as CTO of Taleo, which went public in 2011 and was acquired by Oracle for $1.9 billion in 2012. A distinguished technology veteran, Radovancevich drove the development of Taleo’s cloud-based talent management software platform and its subsequent integration into the Oracle Cloud Platform. He joins Centro’s deep executive bench that has added senior talent in the past 18 months, including agency veteran EVP Scott Neslund (Moxie, Mindshare), media sales expert EVP Charlie Thomas (Yahoo!, Broadcast.com, Time, Inc.) and software executive CMO Kelly Wenzel (Undertone, Tideway).
Under Radovancevich’s guidance, Taleo’s technology transformed human resources into a critical part of next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Its platform technologies scaled to support the needs of more than 5,000 customers encompassing very large enterprises and SMBs alike. Today, more than 15% of all U.S. hires pass through Taleo’s SaaS systems. With this experience, Radovancevich will lead the advancement of Centro’s cloud-based platform and application suite for digital media. Centro’s technology facilitates, automates, tracks and optimizes every step of the digital media planning, buying and execution process for guaranteed-reserved and programmatic direct inventory. In 2012, more than 560 agencies benefitted from the power of the technology via Centro’s managed services offering. As Centro rolls out its full suite of applications, it aims to grow its customer base and transact the majority of digital ad spend.
“Having led and scaled multiple SaaS platforms and companies, including the most successful software company in the HR and talent management industry, Michael brings immense experience in building best-in-class software that meets the needs of a wide variety of enterprises and users,” said Shawn Riegsecker, CEO of Centro. “Adding an executive with Michael’s track record is a huge win for Centro, as we continue building a world-class platform that brings greater efficiency and intelligence to digital media.”
“I’ve seen first-hand how cloud computing can be a huge enabler and accelerator for organizations that want an edge that gives them competitive advantage. Centro is applying this model to digital display advertising, a hot sector that is driving more than $17 billion in annual transactions,” said Michael Radovancevich, CTO of Centro. “We can directly and positively impact the business and health of agencies and publishers. I joined Centro because amid the growth of programmatic advertising, the company emerged as one of the most advanced technology players in the industry.”
Radovancevich has more than 25 years of experience designing and implementing software products including large-scale, high-performance distributed systems, application platforms, component architectures, collaborative financial systems and SaaS. He has held senior engineering leadership positions at Genpact, Avolent, InfoSeek, 280, General Electric, Taligent and Apple. He has several patents pending for distributed systems, messaging technologies, electronic bill presentment and talent management analytics. Radovancevich graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin and completed graduate work in Advanced Operating Systems and Distributed Systems at Stanford University. He is a member of the IEEE and the ACM.
About Centro
Centro (www.centro.net) partners with advertising agencies to improve their campaign performance and digital media teams’ productivity in order to better manage costs and maximize profitability. Centro is the only provider that offers both managed services and cloud software options to simplify and streamline the full campaign life cycle to meet the unique requirements of every agency. Since 2001, Centro’s media logistics specialists have successfully planned and executed more than 20,000 local and national campaigns across all digital display platforms and ad media types. Headquartered in Chicago with 32 offices nationwide, Centro’s success and commitment to culture has led to many accolades, including #1 on Crain’s Best Places to Work in Chicago in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
