Larry Ellison steps down as Oracle’s CEO.
What Now?
I have got to be honest - when a current employee of Oracle sent me an IM stating this, I was shocked at first; my first
reaction was-What the hell? As a former Oracle employee who had spent eight years in various roles, geographies, lines
of business and market segments both as an individual contributor and as senior management, I always felt that Oracle
was Oracle because Larry was at the helm- he had the chutzpah & "brass balls" (aka Alec Baldwin from GlenGary
GlenRoss) needed to do the unexpected and unheard of- take over BEA first and then acquire Sun Microsystems (not to
mention buying the island of Lanai and then an airline that would fly people over there, from all over the world).
Larry had the vision, the business acumen and the ability to move mountains, from a technology perspective. We have all
heard his Oracle Open World keynotes, where he took jibes at Salesforce, Microsoft, IBM and even Apple- his caustic
responses and diatribe about "the cloud" make for great recordings that are timeless classics.
After the initial shock settled in and I dug deeper, I realized that he is still going to be very involved with the company he
had started more than 30 years ago and which he had steered as the captain of the ship (literally with his penchant for
Team Oracle USA & America's Cup). He was taking over the role of the CTO and was moving down from the CEO
position which would now be handled by the dynamic duo of Mark Hurd & Safra Catz. In my opinion, this is a positive
development which will augur well for Oracle- it will allow Larry to focus on what he does best which is technology and
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