Oracle Names Hurd Co-President

Former Hewlett-Packard executive Mark V. Hurd has been named co-president of Oracle, according to an announcement by that company’s CEO, Larry Ellison.

In addition, Hurd has been named to Oracle’s board of directors. Ellison made the announcement late Monday night, capping off a series of recent moves for both Hurd and Oracle.

“Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he’ll do even better at Oracle,” Ellison said in a news release. “There is no executive in the IT world with more relevant experience than Mark.”

Previous to his position at HP, Hurd was chief executive of NCR, a data warehousing technology leader. He resigned from HP last month following a company investigation into possible spending discrepancies.

Charles E. Phillips Jr. resigned his co-president position at Oracle working under Ellison to make room for Hurd following his own personal matters. Other co-president Safra A. Catz will stay on at Oracle.

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

This story has been reprinted with permission from Information Management.