In the past few weeks, the tech world has witnessed quite a few very surprising C-level movements, which has created ripples all across.

The first surprise came when Mark Hurd, former CEO of HP, joined Oracle as its Co-President, Director and Member on Board. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s CEO and supposedly a good friend of Hurd, rendered all speechless with his conspicuous move. As an instant reaction to this coup, HP fled a civil complaint against Hurd. The case was later withdrawn.

Striking back in vengeance, a few weeks later, HP declared Léo Apotheker, the former CEO of SAP, as its new boss. This, in turn, made Ellison “speechless”. The outspoken Oracle CEO was quoted in the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) as being at a loss for words. “I am speechless. HP had several good internal candidates. Instead they picked a guy who was fired because he did a bad job of running SAP,” said Ellison. HP spokesperson, without making Apotheker available, retaliated, “Ellison’s comments don’t deserve the dignity of a response.”

Ellison's impatience to react to HP’s move was obvious. SAP is Oracle’s biggest competitor in the business application domain. Apotheker has worked with SAP for over 20 years. And Ellison seldom misses a chance to take pot shots at SAP.

A few years ago, Paul Maritz left Microsoft to join VMware. At the time of leaving, Maritz was leading the .Net framework Microsoft’s dream platform to capture the developer community. His departure was a jolt to Microsoft, and it remains so even today. Forget about .Net, his exit gave jitters to Microsoft’s plans on the virtualisation front as well. Just as .Net is far from beating Java in the developer world, HyperV is miles away from posing a formidable competition to VMware. This was ratified by a recent Goldman Sachs report, too.

Similarly, Apotheker, however badly he may have handled SAP during his tenure as its CEO, will attempt to give a definite direction to HP’s software business, which currently features at the bottom of the list. And, Oracle that just engulfed Sun Microsystems will get a fillip from Mark Hurd’s appointment.

I am not too sure whether these moves also instigate high value corporate customers to shift their loyalty, but there surely are implications which can be detrimental to competitors.

What are your views?

rahul.mani@9dot9.in