Larry Ellison Steps Down From Oracle CEO Position

Larry Ellison, Oracle’s flamboyant co-founder and CEO of more than 30 years, has stepped down from the chief executive role, the company announced Thursday. He is remaining part of the company’s executive leadership team as CTO and executive chairman of the board.

Oracle presidents Safra Catz and Mark Hurd have both been appointed to the CEO position to replace Ellison. Sales, service and vertical industry business units will continue to report to former HP CEO Hurd, while manufacturing, finance and legal functions will continue to report to Catz.

Ellison will continue overseeing all software and hardware engineering functions. Jeff Henley, who has been the company’s CTO until Ellison’s appointment to the role, will move into the role of vice chairman of the board.

The company did not immediately explain the changes, releasing a statement from Oracle board’s presiding director Michael Boskin saying Ellison had made it clear that he wanted to continue working on product engineering, technology development and strategy full time.

"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."

Oracle announced the changes simultaneously with releasing its earnings report for recently completed first quarter of fiscal 2015. The company’s revenue for the quarter was $8.6 billion, up 3 percent year over year. Its net income was $2.2 billion, unchanged compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2014.

Fiscal Q1 2015 revenue by business:

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud: up 32% to $337 million
Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud: up 26% to $138 million
Hardware systems revenue: down 8% to $1.2 billion

We’ll be updating this story as more details become available.