That was after a public dispute with HP's board over his expense account and a personal relationship. He stepped down that August.How did you feel at the time, given the circumstances, of the departure at HP? Were you angry at all with the situation?No. I liked HP. I liked the company, I liked the people of the company, etc. I had a disagreement with a couple of board members, but that's not HP. If you looked at our financial performance at the time, it was quite positive.
It's one thing when you go to a company that's struggling, and you say,"We've got to change." Most everybody acknowledges that and says,"Gee, I see the results, I see the performance. We have to do something different." It's a very other thing when you go to a company that's winning.
Larry Ellison cofounded the software company he would eventually rename as Oracle in 1977. He stepped down as CEO in 2014 but has remained chairman.Your first day as president, your first several days, what did you see at the company that made you think, OK, we're going to have to completely transform the way sales are done here?I think Oracle historically has been thought of as to be perhaps the greatest salesforce in the IT industry, and I wouldn't try to persuade you differently.
So the fact that we can bring people to market that are expert at all of these issues raises their chance of success. Now if you believe that, and I do, then how you then build a salesforce becomes important based on those building blocks. Now we basically said,"No, you're going to have to sell to the functional buyer. You're going to have to sell to that head of HR or to that CFO." Now you're saying to people,"We're going to change what you sell and we're going to change who you sell it to." And so a lot of people said,"I just don't want to do that." My view is that that's OK. We need to have people that are excited and passionate.