One day after the Sept. 6th announcement from Oracle that former HP CEO Mark Hurd had joined the company as president and a member of Oracle’s board of directors, HP filed a civil complaint asking a court to block his hiring.

"In his new positions, Hurd will be in a situation in which he cannot perform his duties for Oracle without necessarily using and disclosing HP's trade secrets and confidential information to others," the civil complaint states as quoted by Reuters. According to HP, if Hurd is allowed to go to Oracle it would "give Oracle a strategic advantage as to where to allocate or not allocate resources and exploit the knowledge of HP's strengths and weaknesses."

In reaction to the lawsuit, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison issued this statement: “Oracle has long viewed HP as an important partner. By filing this vindictive lawsuit against Oracle and Mark Hurd, the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees. The HP Board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace."

Oracle and HP are longtime partners, working together for 25 years to make sure their products are in sync. The two companies have become much fiercer competitors now that Oracle is a part of the server market with its acquisition of Sun.

Hurd's appointment doesn't necessarily mean Oracle gets everything the former HP executive knows in regards to his previous employer. Part of the Hurd's severance package includes a confidentiality agreement that restricts what he can tell a future employer about internal HP dealings. However, the HP complaint asserts that Hurd "cannot separate out HP's trade secrets and confidential information in performing his daily duties at Oracle."

It is expected a judge will soon schedule a hearing over HP's request to bar Hurd from going to Oracle.

Hurd's hiring coincides with Charles Phillips' resignation as president and a board of directors member. Ellison said Phillips' departure comes at his own request. “When Charles approached me last December and expressed his desire to transition out of the company, I asked him to stay on through the Sun integration which has gone well. We will miss his talent and leadership, but I respect his decision.”

Hurd will be reporting to Ellison directly and joining Safra Catz as co-president of the company.

Hurd resigned from HP in August after the company said he violated standards of business conduct, which included a sexual harassment allegation and reports of fudged expense reports.

According to a Bloomberg article, Hurd more than tripled profits at HP by cutting costs and expanding beyond the company’s core business of computers and printers via more than $20 billion in acquisitions that took the company into services, networking equipment, and smartphones.

“Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he’ll do even better at Oracle,” said Ellison. “There is no executive in the IT world with more relevant experience than Mark. Oracle’s future is engineering complete and integrated hardware and software systems for the enterprise. Mark pioneered the integration of hardware with software when Teradata was a part of NCR.”

Hurd already is aggressively taking on his newly appointed position with an aim at IBM. “I believe Oracle’s strategy of combining software with hardware will enable Oracle to beat IBM in both enterprise servers and storage,” Hurd said. “Exadata is just the beginning. We have some exciting new systems we are going to announce later this month at Oracle OpenWorld. I’m excited to be a part of the most innovative technology team in the IT industry.” [...read more...]

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