Capping a weekend's worth of speculation, Oracle on Monday evening
announced it has hired ex-HP CEO Mark Hurd to be its new president.
In a separate press release, Oracle revealed that current president
Charles Phillips has resigned that post.
Hurd's emergence as a candidate for employment at the
enterprise-software powerhouse was telegraphed during the saga
surrounding his exit from HP in early August. At the time, Oracle
CEO Larry Ellison famously criticized HP's board of directors,
telling The New York Times that Hurd's forced resignation was "the
worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired
Steve Jobs many years ago."
Ellison's high opinion of Hurd was similarly in evidence in the
Monday press release trumpeting his new job. "Mark did a brilliant
job at HP and I expect he’ll do even better at Oracle," said
Ellison's statement. "There is no executive in the IT world with
more relevant experience than Mark. Oracle’s future is
engineering complete and integrated hardware and software systems
for the enterprise. Mark pioneered the integration of hardware with
software when Teradata was a part of NCR."
Hurd will actually be one of two executives holding the title of
president at Oracle. Safra Catz, who has served as co-president
alongside Phillips, will maintain that title going forward. As
former CFO of Oracle from 2005 to 2008, Catz brings deep financial
expertise to the executive suite. As for Hurd, he's expected to
focus on boosting the company's strategic product initiatives.
Indeed, Ellison is widely viewed as having tapped Hurd to help whip
Oracle's hardware strategy into shape. Oracle completed its
acquisition of Sun Microsystems in early 2010, and is in the
processing of fielding bundled hardware-software products, which
typically combine Sun's server hardware with Oracle's enterprise
software. The offerings are marketed with the message that such
combos offer tuned performance which outpaces what competitors can
deliver.
Oracle's Exadata V2 database machine is a prime example of the
company's hardware-software combinations. Along with making the
case for Exadata, Hurd will also likely expend effort on creating a
more cohesive story line around the Sun servers Oracle now
sells.
Hurd spoke to this in Monday's press release. "I believe
Oracle’s strategy of combining software with hardware will
enable Oracle to beat IBM in both enterprise servers and storage,"
he said in the statement. "Exadata is just the beginning. We have
some exciting new systems we are going to announce later this month
at Oracle OpenWorld. I’m excited to be a part of the most
innovative technology team in the IT industry."
As for outgoing president Phillips, his exit after 29 quarters
follows a recent tough patch. In 2010, a purported ex-mistress
rented a billboard in New York's Times Square, trumpeting her
alleged relationship with him.
This past July, Phillips received what amounted to a public rebuke
from Ellison, who gainsaid Phillips's statement that Oracle has a
USD 70-billion acquisitions war chest.
Today, both parties professed mutual admiration, with Ellison
characterizing Phillips's departure as something he had a hand in
initiating. "Charles has evolved our field culture toward a more
customer-centric organization and improved our top line consistency
through a period of tremendous change and growth," Ellison said in
the statement. "When Charles approached me last December and
expressed his desire to transition out of the company, I asked him
to stay on through the Sun integration which has gone well. We will
miss his talent and leadership, but I respect his decision."