It's the end of an era on Redwood Shores, and in Silicon Valley, really, as Larry Ellison has stepped down as the CEO of database maker Oracle.
Ellison founded Oracle in 1977---around the same time that Microsoft and Apple were getting off the ground. It was an era of iconoclasts, technology visionaries who started with small companies and big ideas who built massive fortunes during the explosion of the computer industry.
But Steve Jobs is gone. And Ellison's other tenacious tech peers from the glory days---people like Scott McNealy and Bill Gates---have moved on to other things. Now at 70, Ellison seems to be eyeing a second act, although he will remain involved in the company as chairman of the board and the company's engineering chief.
"Larry has made it very clear that he wants to keep working full time and focus his energy on product engineering, technology development and strategy," said Michael Boskin, the presiding director of Oracle's board, in a press release.
His two top lieutenants Safra Catz and Mark Hurd will jointly operate as the company's CEOs, with Hurd handling sales, and Catz in charge of manufacturing and finance.
Ellison will likely spend time on his other passions, such as the America's Cup. He had already handed over much of the day-to-day operations of Oracle to Hurd and Catz, and last year, he blew off his company's most important user conference to watch his favorite yacht race.
From its humble beginnings as a relational database software company, Ellison's Oracle grew into a corporate giant---now a $182 billion rival to IBM that sells hardware and software that's used at all levels of the corporate world.
