back to article Oracle's Mark Hurd hits pause as co-CEO, says he needs time to deal with health issues

On Wednesday, Oracle said co-CEO Mark Hurd will take a leave of absence to deal with undisclosed health issues, an announcement that coincided with the publication of the tech titan's fiscal 2020 Q1 numbers. The database giant also publicly shared a message Hurd sent to Oracle employees. "Though we all worked hard together to …

  1. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge

    Memento mori

    Assuming that "health issues" isn't just corporate-speak similar to "spend more time with their families", all the best to him. All the money in the world won't hold off the guy with the scythe who talks in ALL CAPS.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Memento mori

      > the guy with the scythe who talks in ALL CAPS.

      You don't mean Bombastic Bob?

      ;-)

    2. StargateSg7

      Re: Memento mori

      This leave of absence for medical reasons being announced so publicly is ALMOST always "Corporate Code-Speak" for he's gotta leave for Chemo and Radiation treatments cuz he's at Stage-3 or Stage-4 and he PROBABLY has only a year left on this Earth at the most!

      Cancer SUCKS! To beat it ya gotta pour everything you have into every treatment you can afford but at this time it USUALLY is at an advanced stage where things are looking pretty bleak and you are at the stage where you literally are resigned or scared enough to TRY EVERYTHING in terms of treatments.

      NOT FUN!

      CUZ you're truly staring Death in the Face at this stage!

      Wish him the best in terms of a return to good health!

      .

  2. D. Evans

    No path to the cloud?

    Oracle, IBM, etc. are not going out of business, at least not soon.

    Some companies due to legal requirements need ACID databases and once your locked in it's hard to move.

    Once your in one cloud it's hard to integrate with another; at least at this time.

    However Larry still seems to be more full of bravado than brawns. I don't see a pipeline to do more than keep pace with inflation adjusted for population. And his cloud is nothing more than a damp squib.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No path to the cloud?

      I agree with your comments on Database. In SaaS Oracle has done a good job of moving to Cloud Apps. IMHO Oracle will be a smaller but more profitable company going forward.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No path to the cloud?

      "Once your in one cloud it's hard to integrate with another; at least at this time."

      But what if your cloud provider needs you to move because their cloud product is under performing revenue-wise and they need you to leave?

      My money is on Oracle's cloud operation being called "Google" within 5 years. There is no way Oracle will use AWS and I'd be surprised to see Oracle using Azure with the whole Oracle vs MSSQL thing and given that a significant chunk of the existing Oracle cloud business is US government work that rules out a non-US firm.

      It's possible that Oracle might choose IBM's cloud solution, but what's the point in moving to IBM if they're going to re-brand to AWS (again my guess) in a similar time frame?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    history

    I'm guessing that he managed to leak more privileged investment information to a new stripper - But this time to the detriment of Oracle instead of HP.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: history

      I'm not sure if $20 bills are considered "privileged investment information".

      OK, maybe if you leak enough of them

  4. beep54
    Happy

    Apparently

    Oracle makes EVERYONE sick.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    he showered superlatives on his company's Autonomous Database, insisting that it takes the cost of human labor and the risk of human error out of the picture. The theft of financial and personal information from Capital One's AWS server, attributed to a misconfigured firewall, could not have happened with Oracle's Autonomous Database, he insisted. "It's not safe to go to any other database," he said.

    It is if you start taking into account the tie-in and licensing games an organisation is exposed to when dealing with Oracle. They're several shades worse than Microsoft.

  6. HmmmYes

    With his history, I assume its veneral.

    1. Nolveys

      Exposure to Oracle caused his soul to become poisoned and die. They left it in there as it was hard to get to, but the damn thing went septic.

  7. Korev Silver badge

    He left Hewlett-Packard following an inquiry into whether he violated the company's code of conduct in the course of interactions with a greeter at HP events and reality TV personality who filed a sexual harassment claim that was later settled privately.

    I wonder if Oracle has various diversity schemes, to me, employing him after that sends quite a clear message about how much the company values diversity.

  8. fredesmite

    He has made $100m a year for the past decade

    I'd be sick too and leave

  9. fredesmite

    umm

    Jodie Fisher ?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    End of data

    STOP

    END

    FINISH

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/18/mark_hurd_obituary/

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