What was Oracle's original corporate name when the future software giant was founded in 1977?

Oracle’s original corporate name was Software Development Laboratories when the future software giant was founded in 1977.

Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates established Software Development Laboratories in California in 1977. The company developed a relational database system inspired by research into relational database concepts, including work associated with IBM’s System R project.

The business changed its name to Relational Software, Inc. in 1979 and adopted the name Oracle Systems Corporation in 1982. Its Oracle Database became the company’s central product and helped make Oracle a major enterprise-technology provider. Oracle later expanded into applications, cloud infrastructure, and business software.

The original name is easy to confuse with Oracle, the database product, or with Relational Software, the company’s intermediate name. Market capitalization reflects the public value of Oracle’s shares today; it does not describe the company’s small initial scale or its original legal identity.