Arik Hesseldahl

Recent Posts by Arik Hesseldahl

Oracle’s Mark Hurd Promises More Growth (Video)

Oracle President Mark Hurd took the company’s message around cloud computing and big data to TV audiences today, arguing that the software and hardware giant is winning business despite a challenging economy and slowing spending from customers around the world.

Hurd appeared on CNBC from the Oracle OpenWorld Conference in San Francisco. “There isn’t a customer we have that’s not on both an austerity plan and an innovation agenda at the same time,” Hurd told CNBC’s Maria Baritoromo in what I think was his first televised interview since joining Oracle in 2010.

He said customers are spending incrementally more of their IT budget simply storing the deluge of data they’re gathering, and repeated the company line that the Exadata line of database hardware helps both shrink the amount of data a company needs to store and then turn that data into useful information.

He also dodged a question about what he thinks is going on at his old stomping grounds, Hewlett-Packard, where he was CEO for five years. Asked where he thinks Oracle’s growth will come from in the near future — it has been rather acquisitive over the last year — he said the company will continue with its balanced approach, buying both companies and shares, and finish beating the market. “Whatever the market does, we’re going to beat it.”

Watch it below.

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”