Oracle was founded in 1977 as Software Development Laboratories and later became a database-software giant.
Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates founded Software Development Laboratories in 1977. The company changed its name to Relational Software in 1979 and adopted the Oracle name in 1982. Its early product was a commercial relational database influenced by research on relational systems.
Oracle’s database technology became central to enterprise computing, where organizations store and query structured business information. The company later expanded into middleware, applications, cloud infrastructure, and hardware through both internal development and acquisitions.
Oracle went public in 1986, giving investors a way to own part of the rapidly growing enterprise-software business. It acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010, bringing Java and the Solaris operating system into its portfolio. Oracle’s market value is therefore tied to a long history that began with database software rather than its newer cloud offerings.