Oracle confirms appointment of Mark Hurd as co-president

7 Sep 2010

Software giant Oracle last night confirmed that former HP CEO Mark Hurd is to join the company as co-president and he will report directly to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

Mark Hurd stepped down as HP CEO over questions about his expenses. This came after an allegation of sexual harassment by a female consultant, however HP found it did not break its policy on the subject.

Ellison is a friend of Hurd and has publicly supported him after he was recently ousted from HP. “The HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago,” said Ellison in an email to the New York Times.

“Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he’ll do even better at Oracle,” said Ellison. “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.”

It is speculated that Hurd could help Oracle continue the integration of Sun Microsystems, after purchasing the company for $7bn.

“Mark is an outstanding executive and a proven winner,” said Oracle president Safra Catz. “I look forward to working with him for years to come. As Oracle continues to grow, we need people experienced in operating a US$100bn business.”

“I believe Oracle’s strategy of combining software with hardware will enable Oracle to beat IBM in both enterprise servers and storage,” said Hurd.

“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,” Hurd added.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com