Oracle was founded in 1977 as Software Development Laboratories.
Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates established Software Development Laboratories in Santa Clara, California. The company later changed its name to Relational Software, Inc., before adopting the name Oracle Corporation in 1982.
Its early work focused on commercializing relational database technology. The company’s product was influenced by research describing relational databases and by a database project associated with the Central Intelligence Agency, which used the code name “Oracle.”
The company is sometimes confused with the Oracle database product itself. Oracle Corporation is the business; Oracle Database is one of its major software products. The company later expanded through acquisitions and became a major provider of database, enterprise software, cloud, and hardware services.