Now Oracle Has Stolen A Top Sales Exec From Salesforce.com

APOracle CEO Larry EllisonEarlier this week, we heard rumors that a top Salesforce.com sales person was jumping ship to join Oracle.

It's true: Kate FitzGerald is now leading sales for Oracle's "customer relationship management" (CRM) unit, which competes with head-on Salesforce.com. Oracle confirmed the move to Business Insider.

FitzGerald is seemingly bucking the trend. In recent months, we've heard multiple reports of sales people leaving Oracle for Salesforce.com, some unconfirmed, some announced. For instance, earlier this month 17-year Oracle sales veteran Anthony Fernicola became Salesforce.com's president of Global Enterprise Sales.

FitzGerald was in charge of Salesforce's Service Cloud, a customer support tool that competes with products like Zendesk.

LinkedIn/Kate FitzGeraldKate FitzGeraldWhile sometimes a change of leadership means the unit is suffering that's probably not the case here. Salesforce.com reports its quarterly earnings on Thursday and Wall Street analyst Pat Walravens expects FitzGerald's unit to "have performed quite well," he says in a research note.

Instead it seems to indicate how Salesforce's new sales leader, Keith Block, is marking his territory. He joined Salesforce.com in June, a year after he left Oracle where he was head of North American sales.

Sources close to Oracle tell Business Insider that grabbing FitzGerald was something of a coup for Block.