Oracle’s (NYSE: ORCL) founder and CEO announced Thursday that he was departing the company leaving control of the database firm to Mark Hurd and Safra Catz.
But stepping down as the company’s chief executive doesn’t mean that Larry Ellison is parting ways with Oracle altogether. Much like how Bill Gates remained with Microsoft in a technical position as chief software architect after his departure as CEO in 2000, Ellison will remain onboard with Oracle as its chief technology officer and chair of the board.
As for Oracle’s new CEO, Hurd and Catz will split that responsibility. Hurd will run sales, marketing and strategy, while Catz will keep her existing role of chief financial officer and oversee legal and manufacturing operations.
Mark Hurd, who joined the company from Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ) in 2010, has been well liked by Wall Street. Despite Oracle’s frequently drastically uneven quarter-over-quarter earnings reports, the company’s stock has increased 75 percent since Hurd joined the company’s ranks.
“[Ellison] wants to keep working full time and focus his energy on product engineering, technology development and strategy,” Michael Boskin, Oracle’s presiding director, said in a public statement.
Ellison leaves Oracle at a time of transition for the company. While Oracle once enjoyed a near de-facto monopoly in its market for the majority of its existence, the recent shift to cloud computing has shaken the company at its core. Oracle’s most recent earnings report saw the company bring in $8.6 billion of revenue and net income of $2.2 billion During the same time last year, Oracle posted revenue of $38 billion and net income of approximately $11 billion.
But despite this large drop in revenue and income, many parts of Oracle as a whole remain healthy and profitable. Revenue from software and cloud was up 6 percent to $6.6 billion this past quarter, while Software-and platform-as-a-service revenue was up 32 percent to $337 million. Infrastructure-as-a-service revenue was up 26 percent to $138 million.
Oracle’s stock remained steady in after hours trading late Thursday.
