Oracle mourns 'brilliant' co-CEO Mark Hurd

The co-CEO died a month after taking leave of his leadership duties at Oracle

Tributes poured in over the weekend for Mark Hurd, co-CEO of Oracle and former chief exec at HP, who has passed away at the age of 62.

Hurd announced he would be taking a leave of absence from Oracle for "health-related" reasons last month, with his fellow chief executive Safra Catz and Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison stepping in to fulfil his duties.

Ellison informed employees on Friday that Hurd had passed away earlier that morning.

"Mark was my close and irreplaceable friend, and trusted colleague," Ellison's email to employees read.

"Oracle has lost a brilliant and beloved leader who personally touched the lives of so many of us during his decade at Oracle. All of us will miss Mark's keen mind and rare ability to analyse, simplify and solve problems quickly. Some of us will miss his friendship and mentorship. I will miss his kindness and sense of humour.

"Mark leaves his beloved wife Paula, two wonderful daughters who were the joy of his life, and his much larger extended family here at Oracle who came to love him.

"I know that many of us are inconsolable right now, but we are left with memories and a sense of gratitude…that we had the opportunity to get know Mark, the opportunity to work with him…and become his friend."

Hurd joined Oracle in 2010 as co-president before being made co-CEO with Katz five years ago.

He started off his career at fintech vendor National Cash Register (NCR), working there for 22 years before becoming chief executive in 2002.

He took on the chief exec mantle at Hewlett-Packard in 2005, taking over from Carly Fiorina, who struggled for years with disappointing earnings reports and a controversial merger between HP and Compaq valued at $25bn at the time.

Hurd immediately started a process of aggressive cost-cutting, including guillotining nearly 10,000 jobs globally, doubling HP's stock price during his first year in charge and smashing the $100bn revenue barrier for the first time in 2007.

However, he resigned from his position in 2010, after sexual harassment allegations by a HP contractor emerged.

An internal investigation found him not guilty of those allegations but did find him guilty of "violations of HP's Standards of Business Conduct".

"The HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago," close friend Ellison said in an email at the time to The New York Times.

A month later, Ellison tapped him to join Oracle, causing a ruckus between the two vendors at the time as HP filed a lawsuit at the time preventing Hurd from joining, citing an agreement he signed in order to protect trade secrets.

Hurd and HP eventually settled the suit, allowing him to take up the role of president at Oracle.

"Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he'll do even better at Oracle," Ellison, then CEO, said at the time.

"There is no executive in the IT world with more relevant experience than Mark. Oracle's future is engineering complete and integrated hardware and software systems for the enterprise."

Hurd's tenure coincided with its shift to cloud-based services and software, going up against the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

He also implemented an overhaul of its salesforce and designing the ‘Class Of' programme, which recruits and trains university graduates to become sales leaders in the organisation.

Bill McDermott, the former CEO of Oracle rival SAP, tweeted his commiserations, stating that despite the competition between the two firms, there was always "professional respect" between them.

Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff also lamented Hurd's passing on Twitter.