Adrian Di Marco | |
|---|---|
 Adrian Di Marco – Executive chairman TechnologyOne | |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Occupation | Executive chairman of TechnologyOne |
| Years active | 1987–present |
| Known for | Founder of TechnologyOne |
Adrian Di Marco (born 1958) is an Australian entrepreneur and businessman. He is the founder and Executive Chairman of TechnologyOne, Australia's largest enterprise software company. [1] [2] [3]
Di Marco was born in Brisbane in 1958, the child of Italian immigrants. [4] He attended St James College in Brisbane. [5]
He became interested in IT after helping his brother, who was studying engineering at university, to program one of the first digital computers. After high school, Di Marco completed a science degree at the University of Queensland, [6] majoring in computer science. [4] Early in his career, he worked at Arthur Andersen (now Accenture). [4]
Di Marco founded TechnologyOne from inside a demountable office in the car park at JL Mactaggart Industries' hide processing plant in Hemmant, Brisbane, in 1987. [7] [8] [9] The company initially received with a small amount of capital [10] from JL Mactaggart Industries. [11]
The company began providing financial software, [12] building its products around relational databases. [13] It has since developed enterprise resource planning software [14] for sectors including local government, universities, [4] [15] and hospitals. [16]
In 1998, when Oracle launched a competitor product and revoked TechnologyOne’s licenses, Di Marco made the company’s products database independent, building its own sales, marketing, and implementation divisions. [17] [10] [18] In December 1999, Di Marco led the company into its listing on the ASX making it one of the most successful floats of the DotCom era. [19] In 2001, he was appointed chairman of TechnologyOne. [20]
Di Marco was member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and was Deputy Chair of the Australian Information Industry Association from 2002 to 2004. [21] He was the Director of the Royal Children's Hospital Foundation Board from 2004 to 2012. [22]
In 2004 Di Marco won the Pearcey Award for innovative and pioneering achievement and contribution to research and development in IT. [23] He was awarded Fellow of the Australian Computer Society in 2010. [24] When he stepped down as CEO in May 2017, Di Marco was one of the longest-serving chief executives of an ASX-listed company. [25] [26]
As CEO, Di Marco established the philanthropic TechnologyOne Foundation, [27] which has made donations to Opportunity International Australia, [28] the School of St Jude in Tanzania, The Fred Hollows Foundation, and others. [29] He also advocated against a business model run by professional managers, which caused the company difficulties in the early 2000s. [5] [25] He has argued that a focus on corporate governance weakens companies and that subject matter experts are more important to have on a board than independent directors. [25] [30]
In May 2017, Di Marco stepped down as CEO from the company but remained its Executive Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer. [31] [17] [32] As of 2019, Di Marco’s 8.6 per cent stake in the company was worth more than $240m, and with his other investments in property, his net worth is reportedly more than $300m. [33] [34]
In 2017, Di Marco invested in accounting software start-up Practice Ignition. [31] In 2018, Di Marco made a $3.2 million investment in sports tech firm Fusion Sport. [35] In 2019, Di Marco made a $500,000 investment with Snackwise. [36]
Di Marco is a founding member of Software Queensland, a group promoting the Queensland software industry. [37] [38] In February 2022, he announced he would be stepping down as TechnologyOne's executive chairman after 35 years with the company, [39] with his resignation effective on 30 June. [40]
Di Marco was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2025 Australia Day Honours for "service to information technology, and to the community". [41]