Mark Hurd, the technology executive credited with making huge gains at NCR and HP has joined Oracle Corporation as Co-President for sales, marketing and software support.
At age 53,
technology veteran Mark Hurd stepped into Oracle Corporation as Co-President. Oracle hopes that Hurd's laser like focus of streamlining and progressive acquisition will be a boon to the Silicon Valley technology company.
Mark Vincent Hurd was born in New York on January 1, 1957, raised in Florida and graduated from Baylor University in Waco, TX with a business degree. Hurd attended Baylor on a tennis scholarship and even spent some time in the pro tennis circuit.
Hurd started his technology career as a salesman at NCR Corporation in 1980. He would go on to spend the next 25 years at NCR rising to global sales manager, and director of operations. In 1999, Hurd became head of Teradata, a data warehousing company acquired by NCR. This was a position that taught Hurd the critical skills of getting and analyzing data quickly and using that info to adapt in a rapidly changing business environment.
While Hurd made a name for himself at NCR and for five record-breaking years as President and CEO at Hewlett-Packard (HP), the technology community is eager to see what Hurd can bring to a giant like Oracle. Oracle is a multi-national technology company that develops and manufactures hardware and software and employs over 100,000 employees. Oracle has lacked stability in the upper management team a fact generally credited to founder and CEO Mark Ellison's strong personality.
At Oracle since October 2010, Mark Hurd shares the reins with co-president Safra Catz. Catz will continue her role in overseeing finance, merger and acquisition and legal operations, while CEO Ellison will continue to oversee engineering and Mark Hurd will head up sales, marketing and software support.
Industry analysts say that Hurd's unique skills are a welcome addition to Oracle as they integrate their largest acquisition, Sun Microsystems. Although HP has been a partner as well as a competitor to Oracle, IBM is still seen as its largest competitor.
Speculation in the industry abounds about whether Hurd will be able to share the reins at Oracle. Ellison as founder and CEO appears to be entrenched. Catz has held her position as Co-President and CFO for eight years. While Hurd enjoyed running the show solo at his previous positions at NCR and HP, Oracle is structured differently.
Ellison founded Oracle in 1977 and has been called the highest paid chief executive in the world. Perhaps Ellison, a man with many hobbies including sailing, cars, airplanes (he's a licensed pilot) & philanthropy, may be finally ready to step back ease himself into a more leisurely lifestyle. Hurd who has been a personal friend of Ellison's for years may be the man to fill that role in the future.
Other industry insiders claim that Ellison, despite his personal relationship with Hurd, only hired him to keep him away from main competitor IBM. It makes a certain amount of sense that Ellison would want Hurd, with his reputation for streamlining and incorporating acquisitions, with him, not against him.
Many technology companies are hyper focused on one area and with ever emerging new technologies and can find themselves quickly irrelevant. Mark Hurd is a technology executive who has proven that he can keep a high tech company profitable and be adaptable in a quickly evolving environment. While it remains to be seen how he'll lead Oracle's sales, marketing and software support efforts, Oracle's glad he's on their side.
