Database giant Oracle has announced that former HP CEO Mark Hurd has joined Oracle as a co-President, and has also been appointed to the company’s board of directors. Hurd will replace Charles Phillips as both co-President and a member of the HP board; Phillips announced his resignation from both posts at the same time Hurd accepted the positions.
“Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he’ll do even better at Oracle,” said Oracle’s controversial CEO Larry Ellison, in a statement. “There is no executive in the IT world with more relevant experience than Mark.”
The move follows reports over the weekend that Oracle was courting Hurd for a senior executive position following Hurd’s abrupt resignation from Hewlett-Packard’s top job in early August for violating the company’s code of business conduct in his relationship with an HP marketing consultant. Hurd was not accused sexual harassment.
At the time, Oracle’s Larry Ellison described the HP board’s move as one of the worst personnel decisions in the history of the technology industry; now, he’s putting his money where his mouth is by giving quickly landing Hurd ion a highly-visible executive position in the technology industry. Industry watchers speculate that Hurd’s appointment to co-President might be a trail run at grooming Hurd to take over Oracle one day. Larry Ellison, now in his mid-60s, has been the company’s one and only CEO for three decades.
Oracle did not give any reason for Charles Phillips leaving the company. Oracle’s remaining co-President, Safra Catz, is remaining with the company.
Oracle plans to move aggressively against IBM—and Hurd’s former employer HP—in the server and data services business, using its recent acquisition of Sun Microsystems to offer end-to-end enterprise-level data warehousing and information systems to large customers.
