| Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) specializes
in developing and marketing enterprise software products — particularly
database management systems. Through organic growth and through a number
of high-profile acquisitions, Oracle enlarged its share of the software
market. By 2007 Oracle ranked third on the list of largest software companies
in the world, after Microsoft and IBM. Subsequently it became larger than
IBM after its acquisition of Hyperion and of BEA.
The corporation has arguably become
best-known due to association with its flagship Oracle database. The company
also builds tools for database development, middle-tier software, enterprise
resource planning software (ERP), customer relationship management software
(CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) software.
The founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation,
Larry Ellison, has served as Oracle's CEO throughout the company's history.
Ellison also served as the Chairman of the Board until his replacement
by Jeffrey O. Henley in 2004. Ellison retains his role as CEO.
Ellison took inspiration[citation needed]
from the 1970 paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database systems
named "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks". He had
heard about the IBM System R database from an article in the IBM Research
Journal provided by Ed Oates (a future co-founder of Oracle Corporation).
System R also derived from Codd's theories, and Ellison wanted to make
his Oracle product compatible with System R, but IBM stopped this by keeping
the error codes for their DBMS secret. Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation
in 1977 under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL). In 1979
SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc. (RSI). In 1982, RSI renamed
itself as Oracle Systems to align itself more closely with its flagship
product Oracle Database. At this stage Robert Miner served as the company's
senior programmer. |
