Mark Hurd Pitches New Oracle Data Servers at Annual Confab

Oracle Corp. (ORCL) Co-President Mark Hurd, who was brought aboard by the software giant after leaving his CEO post at Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) last month amid controversy, unveiled four new versions of the company's Exadata storage servers at Oracle's annual customer conference in San Francisco today, The Wall Street Journalreported.

The new servers boost storage capacity while speeding up data processing, the Journal said, citing Hurd's keynote speech at the event. Hurd said he was "thrilled" to be with the company, though didn't mention HP, according to the newspaper.

Sponsored Links

Oracle gained attention earlier this month when it hired the former HP chief to be its co-president. HP subsequently sued Hurd, alleging that he risked violating confidentiality agreements because Oracle became a competitor in the server industry when it acquired Sun Microsystems earlier this year for about $7.4 billion.

Hurd stepped down as the HP chief last month after he was accused of sexual harassment by a contractor and a resulting investigation found that he made unauthorized payments to the contractor.

Last week, Oracle said its fiscal first-quarter profit surged 20% as the world's No. 2 software company to Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) generated higher revenue from a jump in software-license sales.