(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Oracle chief executive officer Larry Ellison has expressed his disappointment at Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com) for hiring former SAP CEO Leo Apotheker as its new CEO and president.
“I’m speechless,” Ellison wrote in a message to the Wall Street Journal and other major news outlets. “HP had several good internal candidates…but instead they pick a guy who was recently fired because he did such a bad job of running SAP.”
Prior to his hiring by HP, announced Thursday, Apotheker was at German enterprise software developer SAP (www.sap.com) for more than 20 years, and was promoted to co-CEO of the company in April 2008. He has been credited as a major force in making SAP the largest business software applications company in the world, and was instrumental in developing and implementing the most significant changes in SAP history.
On February 7, 2010, however, the company’s supervisory board reached an agreement with Apotheker not to extend his SAP executive board contract, and he subsequently stepped down as CEO and resigned from SAP.
The WSJ notes, however, that Ellison’s motivations are not those of an indepent outsider, nor are they entirely benevolent. SAP, after all, is Oracle’s largest rival in the business-application space, and Ellison has been known to take pot shots at its competitor.
Part of the email quoted by the Financial Times, however, hints at more serious allegations: “SAP has already publicly confessed and accepted financial responsibility for systematically stealing Oracle’s intellectual property over a long period of time. Much of this industrial espionage and intellectual property theft occurred while Léo was CEO of SAP.
“The HP board must have been aware of these facts, yet they appointed Léo CEO of HP anyway. What happened to ‘The HP Way’?”
It must also be noted that Oracle poached former HP CEO Mark Hurd shortly after he resigned as chief executive officer of HP following an investigation into alleged indiscretions. Subsequently, HP filed a lawsuit against its former CEO, claiming he will be compelled to dispense critical information to its rival as an Oracle co-president, director and board member.
An HP spokesperson told the WSJ that Ellison’s comments don’t “deserve the dignity of a response,” and declined to make Apotheker available for comment.
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