Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates co-founded Oracle in 1977 as Software Development Laboratories.
The company was established in Santa Clara, California, to develop software based on relational-database research at IBM. Ellison became interested in the work after reading an influential IBM paper by Edgar F. Codd describing the relational model for database management.
Software Development Laboratories released its first commercial database product in 1979. It was called Oracle Version 2, partly because no Version 1 was marketed. The company changed its name to Relational Software, Inc., in 1979 and adopted Oracle Systems Corporation in 1982.
The founding year is sometimes confused with the 1979 release of Oracle’s first product or with the company’s later name changes. Oracle eventually became one of the world’s major enterprise-software companies, offering database systems, cloud services, and business applications.