Oracle began in 1977 as Software Development Laboratories and became a major database and cloud provider.
Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates founded Software Development Laboratories in California in 1977. The company built database software based on relational database research, and it changed its name to Relational Software in 1979 before adopting the name Oracle Corporation in 1982.
Oracle Database became the company’s flagship product, helping businesses organize and query structured information. Oracle later expanded into enterprise applications, servers, consulting, and cloud infrastructure.
The company’s name is sometimes confused with the database product itself. Oracle Corporation is the publicly traded company; Oracle Database is one of its principal software products. Its scale in enterprise technology has made it a prominent company by market capitalization.