“It’s a team,” said Mark Hurd, Oracle’s new co-chief executive, in an interview Friday about his working relationship with his fellow co-CEO Safra Catz and the company’s co-founder Larry Ellison.
On Thursday, Oracle shook the tech industry with the announcement that Hurd and Catz would be co-CEOs. Hurd had been the company’s co-president largely in charge of sales and marketing. Catz, also a co-president, focused on finances and operations. Ellison will be the company’s chief technology officer and executive chairman.
While Oracle downplayed the significance of the announcement, the change for Ellison “signals a historic shift in the Bay Area’s technology landscape,” Steve Johnson wrote in the Mercury News.
For Hurd, who had been Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive, the new role was an acknowledgement of his work at Oracle and a vindication of sorts, as I wrote in a column.
Hurd left HP in 2010 under a cloud over inaccurate expense reports related to an outside contractor. He immediately began working at Oracle, where he has doubled the sales team and refocused the company on cloud computing.
Analysts have raised questions about the three-headed leadership structure at Oracle, but Hurd said it works:
We come together a lot. We work together a lot. In spite of how the roles are lined up there is interchangeability in the parts… We come from different disciplines but
I asked him if the new title – being at the top of a tech company again – felt like any vindication for his treatment at HP. He didn’t sound like he wanted to reflect on the past: “I don’t want to be on history channel. Try to be on news channel.”
And he added:
I had a great time at HP. I enjoyed my time in HP…I am at Oracle now. I come to work every day to make Oracle the best it can be.
Above: Mark Hurd, Oracle’s co-CEO.
