Cloud Computing: Secret passages and skipped meals: Oracle CEO gives rare peek at what it takes to run a $37 billion company
September 27, 2016
Grazed from BusinessInsider. Author: Julie Bort.
With $37 billion in annual revenue, Oracle is one of the world’s biggest tech companies. And every year, tens of thousands of customers, partners, industry analysts, and journalists descend upon San Francisco for the company’s OpenWorld tech conference. It is a pinnacle week for the company’s top execs — its two famous CEOs, Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, and its even more famous founder, Larry Ellison, who stepped down from the CEO role in 2014 to become executive chairman and CTO, though he’s still very much the leader of the executive triad.
Oracle invited me to spend a full day shadowing Hurd last week at OpenWorld as he met with customers, analysts, and others on the biggest day of the conference. During the week, Hurd met with nearly 500 people either in one-on-one meetings or in small groups, answering their questions, solving problems, issuing reassurances, and explaining the company’s plans and strategy — all at a surprisingly exhausting pace…