In the span of just one month, Mark Hurd has gone from CEO of Hewlett Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), which he helped turn into the world’s largest technology company, to a president of Oracle Corp., which wants to triple its revenue and become HP- and IBM-like (NYSE: IBM) in size.
In hiring Hurd, Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison is gaining someone with experience in running a very large company, and with knowledge in areas that Oracle is counting on for some of its growth: hardware and, in particular, storage.
That Oracle is also hiring someone who knows HP’s strategy, markets and its enterprise customers, is also a big plus.
All of this unfolded on Labour Day, a Shakespearian-like tale of defeat, resurrection and possibly revenge, depending on perspective. Hurd resigned last month after facing a sexual harassment claim that turned up some inaccurate expense accounts. HP is still searching for a new CEO.
Perhaps HP’s board had been hoping that Hurd might disappear into the mysterious world of private equity fund management, and not, as it turns out, go to a company with an ever-expanding desire for growth. This move by Ellison, if anything, gives HP something new to think about as it seeks his replacement.
“Should HP be worried? Very much so,” said Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT. Hurd “intimately understands what it takes to effectively transform and manage a world-class system vendor organization, which is exactly what Oracle desperately wants for itself.”
Ellison has continually cited IBM as its top competitive threat and on Monday Hurd echoed that view. “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 released by Oracle.
Perhaps Oracle’s focus will be on IBM, but it can’t be thrilled with the “HP Sunset” program, which is designed to help move Sun customers off its platforms. Hurd will know “which Sun accounts were being most heavily mined and which HP accounts are the most vulnerable in the large enterprise space – that could be very valuable,” said Rob Enderle, an independent analyst in San Jose, Calif.
One part of Hurd’s resume that may help him at Oracle is his background in running NCR Corp., particularly its data warehousing effort, said Jean Bozman, an analyst at IDC. This is experience that could be applied to Oracle’s plans to develop the Exadata line of storage servers.
These Exadata systems, built with “building blocks” of small servers, flash memory and fast I/O, can scale from less than $250,000 to $1 million-plus configurations that support transactional workloads and scalable databases, said Bozman.
Hurd’s arrival means a big change for Oracle, too. Hurd will be one of two presidents at Oracle, joining Safra Catz. Oracle’s co-president Charles Phillips resigned, a move that had been planned before Hurd’s hiring, said Oracle.
In hiring Hurd, Ellison is bringing on board someone whose managerial approaches and cost-cutting actions won both praise and criticism. But unlike his role at HP, Hurd doesn’t necessarily have final say on the big issues, and reports to Ellison.
If HP is worried about Hurd taking the job at Oracle, then its first step may be to look closely at any non-compete provisions in Hurd’s severance, said analysts.
It’s also possible that Hurd’s move to Oracle may be cast by both companies as something that will help them further their partnership. For sure, Ellison was already close enough to Hurd to voice apparent anger over his removal, calling it “cowardly corporate political correctness.”
By hiring Hurd, Ellison made very clear on Monday how strongly he believes HP acted in error — and how quickly he could move to exploit that mistake.
