Software. Hardware. Complete.

Looks like Mark Hurd's unemployment stint is coming to a close, as it was announced that he would be joining Oracle this past weekend. He will be replacing Charles Philips, who has since resigned his position. It seems that Phillips had been looking to leave for some time, but had decided to stay through the Sun acquisition.

Sure, there was a lot of controversy surrounding his departure, but even HP itself concluded that it could find no hard evidence of wrongdoing. And as for the falsified expense reports, I think that Larry Ellison summed it up quite simply when he said that no CEO fills out his own expense reports, so if there was fraud, it was done by someone else.

All issues aside, this move seems to put Oracle on a path to go squarely after IBM, as no doubt that Hurd won't be the last ex-HP employee making the switch to Oracle in the next few months. Hurd's experience in hardware is something that Oracle needed in order to parlay the Sun hardware acquired in the merger. As with all things Larry, it will be interesting to see how this - as well as the Java lawsuit, which has been strangely quiet - play out over the coming weeks.

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