Oracle CEO Larry Ellison shows new servers in conference kickoff, sidesteps Mark Hurd dustup

Ellison sidesteps Hurd spat, shows servers instead

SAN FRANCISCO — Oracle CEO Larry Ellison steered clear Sunday of the brouhaha surrounding his most contentious new employee — ousted Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd — at a conference for developers and customers.

Instead, he turned up the heat in his other latest troublemaking tactic: upsetting the long-standing order of the technology world with a plunge into selling computer servers.

Ellison showed off a new Oracle machine that has 30 servers and other hardware and software, the result of Oracle’s $7.3 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems, which put Oracle into competition with IBM and HP in servers.

To show that HP’s and Oracle’s friendship hasn’t fallen apart, Oracle invited two HP executives to promote HP’s products on stage before Ellison.