Oracle CEO Larry Ellison Steps Down, Becomes CTO

Longtime Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison today stepped down from the top job at the company he founded. Ellison will remain with Oracle and serve as its chief technology officer and executive chairman of its board of directors.

Oracle also announced Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, the company’s co-presidents, will share CEO responsibilities going forward. Ellison turned 70 on August 17 of this year.

“Safra and Mark will now report to the Oracle board rather than to me,” Ellison said in a prepared statement. “All the other reporting relationships will remain unchanged. The three of us have been working well together for the last several years, and we plan to continue working together for the foreseeable future. Keeping this management team in place has always been a top priority of mine.”

Ellison has served as Oracle’s top executive since the company was founded 35 years ago.

Oracle today claims 400,000 customers in more than 145 countries. Bloomberg also notes the Redwood City, California-based technology giant has a market capitalization of more than $185 billion and produces annual revenue of $38 billion.

What do the leadership changes mean for Oracle and its customers?

Oracle described how it will delegate responsibilities following the leadership changes:

“Larry has made it very clear that he wants to keep working full-time and focus his energy on product engineering, technology development and strategy,” said Michael Boskin, the Oracle Board’s presiding director. “Safra and Mark are exceptional executives who have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to lead, manage and grow the company. The directors are thrilled that the best senior executive team in the industry will continue to move the company forward.”

Oracle, meanwhile, could prioritize the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market in the future.

The database software provider announced in June that its cloud and software revenues increased 4 percent to $8.9 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014. Oracle also noted its generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) cloud SaaS and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) revenues rose 25 percent to $322 million during the quarter.

“Oracle is now the second-largest SaaS company in the world,” Ellison said in June. “We plan to increase our focus on the cloud and become number one in both the SaaS and the PaaS businesses.”

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