Mark Hurd

Mark Hurd is chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation and a business leader in the technology industry. He brings more than thirty years of experience in sales and leadership strategy to his current role. Hurd has been recognized for his industry contributions by prominent business publications – in 2008, The San Francisco Chronicle named him CEO of the Year and in 2007, Fortune listed him as one of the Most Powerful People in Business.

In 2004, Mark Hurd put his experience to paper, authoring The Value Factor with mentor and former NCR CEO Lars Nyberg. The book discusses how information can be a company’s strongest asset - how data on customers and partners can provide today’s top businesses with a competitive edge. Bringing more than 60 years of business experience combined, Mark Hurd and Lars Nyberg share their perspectives – weaving case studies, leadership advice, and business lessons into a valuable resource for business leaders. Described as “a must read for busy executives looking for every advantage for their firm” by author Michael Treacy, The Value Factor distills Mark’s experiences in the world’s leading technology companies.

Mark Hurd also wrote the foreword for Competing for Customers: Why Delivering Business Outcomes is Critical in the Customer First Revolution, published in 2016 by co-author and Oracle colleague, Jeb Dasteel. Hurd describes the evolution businesses have undergone over the last several years, where customers and results-based buying have become a main focus. Jeb Dasteel, senior vice president and chief customer officer at Oracle, has worked with Hurd to help Oracle become the customer-focused organization it is today. Hurd has also been a featured contributor on LinkedIn, covering topics ranging from recruiting to cloud computing.

As CEO of Oracle, Mark has championed Oracle Cloud as the path forward for enterprise computing. Noting the security, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of moving to the cloud, Mark predicts that by 2020, 80 percent of production apps will be hosted in the cloud along with 100 percent of development and testing environments. Mark also revamped Oracle’s sales process, shifting into a specialist model that allows salespeople to become experts in their product categories. He pioneered the “Class Of” program, recruiting thousands of recent college graduates into a world-class sales training program.