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<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image">APLarry Ellison is recruiting.</div></div><keyword id="43340" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Oracle">Oracle</keyword> just <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/acquisitions/selectminds/index.html">bought SelectMinds</a>, a New York-based maker of social recruiting tools.
<keyword id="1739511" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="SelectMinds">SelectMinds</keyword> specializes in mining current and former employees' networks for job referrals. Oracle plans to tie it into other software products which manage companies' talent.
Earlier this year, <keyword id="154290" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Salesforce-com">Salesforce.com</keyword>, the upstart that's proving to be Oracle's archrival in cloud software, bought a startup, Rypple, that manages some human-capital functions.
<keyword id="815800" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Workday">Workday</keyword>, a company that's in registration to go public, also does cloud-based software that helps companies manage employees.
Some of this software overlaps with the recruiting functions many businesses use LinkedIn for. But SelectMinds also manages job listings on LinkedIn.
The eventual aim for all the players in the market is to manage employees all the way through their career-from identifying them as a prospective hire, to bringing them on board, to cultivating their performance over time.
Terms of the acquisition weren't disclosed.

With Its Latest Acquisition, Oracle Wants To Help You Get A Job

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image">APLarry Ellison is recruiting.</div></div><keyword id="43340" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Oracle">Oracle</keyword> just <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/acquisitions/selectminds/index.html">bought SelectMinds</a>, a New York-based maker of social recruiting tools.
<keyword id="1739511" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="SelectMinds">SelectMinds</keyword> specializes in mining current and former employees' networks for job referrals. Oracle plans to tie it into other software products which manage companies' talent.
Earlier this year, <keyword id="154290" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Salesforce-com">Salesforce.com</keyword>, the upstart that's proving to be Oracle's archrival in cloud software, bought a startup, Rypple, that manages some human-capital functions.
<keyword id="815800" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Workday">Workday</keyword>, a company that's in registration to go public, also does cloud-based software that helps companies manage employees.
Some of this software overlaps with the recruiting functions many businesses use LinkedIn for. But SelectMinds also manages job listings on LinkedIn.
The eventual aim for all the players in the market is to manage employees all the way through their career—from identifying them as a prospective hire, to bringing them on board, to cultivating their performance over time.
Terms of the acquisition weren't disclosed.

<div class="image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="Mike Gregoire" title_caption="Mike Gregoire (center) shows off his trophy after finishing the Leadville 100 mountain bike race" class="zoomin" href="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/51c4a8b669bedd6424000002-960/mike-gregoire-leadville-trophy.jpg"></a><keyword id="1737785" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mike-Gregoire">Mike Gregoire</keyword>Mike Gregoire (center) shows off his trophy after finishing the Leadville 100 mountain bike race</div></div>In January, <keyword id="155272" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="CA-Technologies">CA Technologies</keyword> hired a new CEO: Mike Gregoire, the former CEO of Taleo who sold that company to Oracle in 2012 for $1.9 billion.
Business Insider had a chance to chat with Gregoire about the Taleo deal, his life after the sale, and his new job.
Prior to selling Taleo, Gregoire had a long and not-very wonderful history with Oracle. He had been a vice president at PeopleSoft during Oracle’s hostile takeover in 2004, one of the nastiest takeovers in tech history. Years ago <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ceo-of-the-company-oracle-just-bought-for-19-billion-was-once-tortured-by-oracle-2012-2">Gregoire had described</a> that time as "18 months of continuous bombardment from Oracle."
But he told us that when Oracle came sniffing around Taleo, it was a pleasant experience. 
"The way they handled PeopleSoft was completely different than how they handled Taleo. The people I dealt with — Larry Ellison, Safra Catz — were professional," he said.
As CEO, Gregoire had an obligation to let go of the past. "The only question you can ask yourself is, 'Is it right for shareholders?' That's your job as a CEO."
With Taleo, Oracle was "willing to pay a premium" and it was good for shareholders to get that money up front, rather than face "the risks of growing into that valuation," he told us. "And at a 49% premium, that's good for shareholders." So the deal was done. 
Gregoire seemed genuinely happy about it though it's not hard to see why. The deal also cashed him out of <a href="http://www.insidermonkey.com/insider-trading/company/taleo+corp/1134203/sales/0/">his Taleo stake of about 233,000 shares,</a> according to Insidermonkey.com. At $46 per share, that's $10.7 million. And he didn't have to work at Oracle for Ellison.
<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:300px"><div class="image">CA TechnologiesCA CEO Mike Gregoire</div></div>Instead the 46-year-old Gregoire set his sights on enjoying life and mountain bike racing. He competed in the <a href="http://www.leadvilleraceseries.com/page/show/315773-100-mile-mtb-race">Leadville 100 race,</a> the most difficult, highest-elevation endurance race in the US. He also did The Tahoe Trail 100 mountain bike race and spent time with his two young kids. "I drove them to school and did a lot of traveling with family."
But when CA Technologies came calling with a CEO job, much to his wife's chagrin, he took the job, and moved his family from his homes in the Valley and Tahoe to the east coast. CA is based in Island ia, N.Y.
What lured him to take on this $4 billion, old-school <keyword id="286636" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Enterprise-Software">enterprise software</keyword> company struggling to remake itself in the age of cloud computing?
"CA has a lot of customers, a lot of cash, a lot of patents on things that matter," he said. As an endurace mountain bike racer, Gregoire seems like he has the stamina for this new challenge, too.

Mike Gregoire Gave Up A Life Of Mountain Biking To Revamp A $4 Billion Company

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="SilkRoad" title_caption="SilkRoad Technology founder Andrew " Flip="" Filipowski="" class="zoomin" href="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/52091215ecad04ed59000002-960/flip-flipowski-1.jpg"></a><a href="http://www.silkroadequity.com/FlipFilipowski.html">SilkRoad</a>SilkRoad Technology founder Andrew "Flip" Filipowski</div></div>If you've been curious about Silk Road, the illegal Internet market for drugs, maybe you tried to point your browser at SilkRoad.com.
You can't find <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/silk-road-walkthrough-2013-3#then-youre-greeted-by-the-main-homepage-lets-browse-the-psychedelics-2">the Silk Road black market like that</a>, but you will find a perfectly legit company called SilkRoad. It offers a <keyword id="6393327" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Human-Resources">human resources</keyword> cloud app and competes with the likes of Workday, SuccessFactors and Taleo.
The company was founded in 2003 by <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> bigwig "Flip" Filipowski, best known as the founder and CEO of Platinum Technology which sold to Computer Associates in 1999 for $4 billion dollars.
Filipowski couldn't have known in 2003 that the name Silk Road would be usurped by the black market. But it doesn't look like the association has hurt the company any.
For instance, today, the company<a href="%20http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/silkroad-closes-16-million-in-growth-financing-led-by-foundation-capital-nasdaq-kipo-1819786.htm"> nabbed a $16 investment round,</a> lead by Foundation Capital with Intel Capital and others participating, bringing its total funding to $145 million.
And maybe having a similar name has helped it. The first stories about Silk Road, the drug marketplace, began circulating in 2011 (thanks to Gawker and NPR), but in early 2013, tech sites began covering the site more regularly.
Look at how the traffic at legit site SilkRoad.com leaped at the start of the year, according to Compete.com:
<div class="KonaFilter image-container click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="Complete.com" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/52090c9fecad04fe4e000004-960/silkroad-traffic.png"></a><a href="https://siteanalytics.compete.com/silkroad.com/">Complete.com</a></div></div>
It's not the misdirected traffic that has this company flourishing. Its success comes from its leaders and the fact that it plays in a hot enterprise market filled with spectacular exits: Oracle bought Taleo for $1.2 billion; SAP bought SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion; Workday's stock is soaring from an opening IPO price of $48 to $74 (a $12.76 billion market cap).

The OTHER SilkRoad, Which Doesn't Sell Drugs, Has Now Raised $145 Million

<div class="image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="SilkRoad" title_caption="SilkRoad Technology founder Andrew " Flip="" Filipowski="" class="zoomin" href="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/52091215ecad04ed59000002-960/flip-flipowski-1.jpg"></a><a href="http://www.silkroadequity.com/FlipFilipowski.html">SilkRoad</a>SilkRoad Technology founder Andrew "Flip" Filipowski</div></div>If you've been curious about Silk Road, the illegal Internet market for drugs, maybe you tried to point your browser at SilkRoad.com.
You can't find <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/silk-road-walkthrough-2013-3#then-youre-greeted-by-the-main-homepage-lets-browse-the-psychedelics-2">the Silk Road black market like that</a>, but you will find a perfectly legit company called SilkRoad. It offers a <keyword id="6393327" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Human-Resources">human resources</keyword> cloud app and competes with the likes of Workday, SuccessFactors and Taleo.
The company was founded in 2003 by <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> bigwig "Flip" Filipowski, best known as the founder and CEO of Platinum Technology which sold to Computer Associates in 1999 for $4 billion dollars.
Filipowski couldn't have known in 2003 that the name Silk Road would be usurped by the black market. But it doesn't look like the association has hurt the company any.
For instance, today, the company<a href="%20http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/silkroad-closes-16-million-in-growth-financing-led-by-foundation-capital-nasdaq-kipo-1819786.htm"> nabbed a $16 investment round,</a> lead by Foundation Capital with Intel Capital and others participating, bringing its total funding to $145 million.
And maybe having a similar name has helped it. The first stories about Silk Road, the drug marketplace, began circulating in 2011 (thanks to Gawker and NPR), but in early 2013, tech sites began covering the site more regularly.
Look at how the traffic at legit site SilkRoad.com leaped at the start of the year, according to Compete.com:
<div class="image-container click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="Complete.com" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/52090c9fecad04fe4e000004-960/silkroad-traffic.png"></a><a href="https://siteanalytics.compete.com/silkroad.com/">Complete.com</a></div></div>
It's not the misdirected traffic that has this company flourishing. Its success comes from its leaders and the fact that it plays in a hot enterprise market filled with spectacular exits: Oracle bought Taleo for $1.2 billion; SAP bought SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion; Workday's stock is soaring from an opening IPO price of $48 to $74 (a $12.76 billion market cap).

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image">APOracle president Mark Hurd</div></div>Oracle reports its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday and analysts have hopes for a good quarter.
They are expecting 4% growth in revenue over the year-ago quarter, and EPS to be $0.70, up from $0.65.
If the company exceeds these targets, it will be a two-in-a-row beat.
Oracle could really use that. It missed revenue expectations for the prior three quarters in a row, an almost unheard of series of misses for the company as it struggled to stop its hardware business from shrinking.
With revenue soft, Oracle spent most of 2013 in cost-cutting mode. That meant that many Oracle employees didn't get their bonuses, Wall analyst analyst Steve Koenig, of Wedbush said in a <a href="https://equities.wedbush.com/clientsite/Research/ActionAlertFilePreview.asp?UUID=28DEF8EA-BF7B-4E45-8BD2-791D48724F4C&amp;ViewerID=1CE41D7D-B184-45DA-AF98-1334A2E3030F">research note published last week: </a>
"Our checks suggest FY13 bonuses were trimmed or eliminated for many employees across the company , which augurs wells for cost control, but not so much for ORCL's ability to attract and retain talent."
Koenig clarified to Business Insider, "It's anecdotal, but we heard from more employees that they are not getting their fiscal '13 bonuses, which ended [last] May. And it seems that that sort of thing is more frequent than it has been in the past. [This affects] people in marketing, internal development, etc."
The company has been beefing up its revenue numbers with cloud acquisitions. However Koenig says that once those acquisitions get absorbed, Oracle hasn't been making much hay with them.
"Some of the SaaS acquisitions they've done don't look they are generating a whole lot of growth. I've heard that RightNow is doing really well, but I conclude that Taleo is probably not growing well," he says. Oracle bought customer service cloud RightNow for $1.5 billion in 2011 and bought human resource cloud Taleo <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1517159">for $1.9 billion in 2012. </a>
He says that if you strip out the revenue from whatever cloud acquisition Oracle has most recently completed, "cloud revenue out stays flat."
Still, Koenig isn't panning the stock altogether. He maintains a "neutral" rating and target price of $40. The stock is trading at about $38 now.
He thinks Oracle is going to beat consensus expectations tomorrow, and that it's doing an especially good job in selling its the latest version of its bread-and-butter product, the database. Oracle released a new version<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1967380"> of its database, 12c, last summer.</a> 12c is designed for cloud computing applications, an area where enterprises are investing heavily.
Oracle declined comment.

Many Of Oracle's Employees Are Not Getting Their Bonuses, Says Analyst

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div>Plex Systems</div>Startup Plex Systems has a pinball arcade complete with its own pinball wizard, Michael McDonald.
How cool is that?
McDonald is one of the founding members of the Detroit Pinball League and co-organizer of something called the Michigan Pinball Expo. He's won a few tournaments, too.
When not playing, McDonald is a developer working on the company's cloud-based ERP app.
Michigan-based Plex <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jason-blessing-plex-systems-2013-2">recently lured Jason Blessing</a> to be its new CEO. Blessing is a former PeopleSoft and Taleo exec who escaped the clutches of Oracle, twice, when each of his employers was acquired.
Blessing jumped at the CEO job back in his home state. But he says his favorite thing about his new company is the pinball arcade.

Awesome Startup Perk: Plex Systems Has An Old Fashioned Pinball Arcade

<div class="image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><keyword id="1739503" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Reachable">Reachable</keyword>Reachable CEO Al Campa</div></div></div>Reachable, which launched a week ago, is a startup that's going to help companies mine their employees' Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts.
It wants to use those connections for marketing, recruiting, or sales.
Reachable scans public information on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other sources, to build a massive database that shows how everyone in the world is connected.
It sells access to that database to companies as a cloud service. They add in their own corporate information, like e-mail addresses, HR records, etc. and Reachable gives them a corporate "social graph." So when someone at the company wants to find contacts at another company, say Oracle or Google, it can find employees with contacts.
It's cool and a little creepy. Reachable might even have you in its database because it has already mapped "100 billion connections from all these different sources," says CEO Al Campa.
"I believe the online world ultimately mimics offline world. You have business connections. They are not all in Facebook or in LinkedIn, they are all over the place," he says. "That's what Reachable is trying to build. The one system that has a database of everybody that you know from any source, and everyone at your company, and everyone that they know."
So Reachable is grabbing "all social data, LinkedIn data, Facebook data, some Twitter data," he says as well as e-mail address books ("with user's permission, of course," he says). It snags work history. It looks for customer data and other public stuff from sources like Thompson Reuters, Dunn &amp; Bradstreet, etc.
Reachable sees this as tool to eliminate cold calling for sales and replace that with having an employee that knows the person reach out. But it is also being used by company recruiters, too.
Reachable is also noteworthy because, a little over a year ago, it nabbed <a href="http://www.reachable.com/newsroom/reachable-appoints-al-campa-as-new-ceo.htmlhttp://www.reachable.com/newsroom/reachable-appoints-al-campa-as-new-ceo.htmlhttp://www.reachable.com/newsroom/reachable-appoints-al-campa-as-new-ceo.htmlhttp://www.reachable.com/newsroom/reachable-appoints-al-campa-as-new-ceo.htmlhttp://www.reachable.com/newsroom/reachable-appoints-al-campa-as-new-ceo.htmlhttp://www.reachable.com/newsroom/reachable-appoints-al-campa-as-new-ceo.html">Campa</a> as its CEO. Campa became a who's-who in Silicon Valley for founding Jaspersoft (makers of an uber popular open source analytics software). He left his startup to become chief marketing officer for Taleo in 2007. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ceo-of-the-company-oracle-just-bought-for-19-billion-was-once-tortured-by-oracle-2012-2">Oracle acquired Taleo for $1.9 billion in February.</a>
Don't miss: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/your-employer-may-soon-want-to-use-your-facebook-account-2012-4#ixzz1zUnm4IoG">Your Company Might Think It Can Control Your Facebook Account Soon</a>

This Startup Will Let Your Company Use Your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter Accounts

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div>Asa Mathat | All Things Digital</div><keyword id="43340" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Oracle">Oracle</keyword> announced today that it was buying network equipment <a href="http://www.oracle.com/acmepacket">maker Acme Packets for $2.1 billion</a>.
Oracle will actually pay $29.25/share, about a 22 percent premium. But when accounting for Acme's cash, Oracle will really be paying, $1.7 billion, the company says.
This is an interesting and surprising move for Oracle.
Acme Packets makes equipment for VoIP networks, which allows voice and video to run over a data network. (In geek terms, it makes something called session border controllers). VoIP is the tech that gave us Skype and Facetime.
Acme is the largest SBC equipment maker, with about 800 employees and 1,900 customers. It's an old market (Acme was founded in 2000) but <a href="http://www.delloro.com/news/session-border-controller-market-returned-to-growth-in-the-third-quarter">it has gotten hot again</a>, because wireless service providers are upgrading their networks to run voice over the data part of their networks, a tech called Voice over LTE.
Cisco is, of course, <a href="http://www.delloro.com/news/session-border-controller-market-returned-to-growth-in-the-third-quarter">working hard to own the VoLTE market</a>. It offers its own SBC product. Rumors circulated <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/836921-evidence-suggests-that-acme-packet-s-takeover-rumors-were-fake">last summer that Cisco would buy Acme.</a>
By buying Acme, Oracle again signals its intent to compete head-to-head against Cisco on Cisco's turf, network equipment. Last summer, Oracle <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-cisco-software-defined-networking-2012-7">bought startup, Xsigo</a>, another network equipment maker.
This is Oracle's first <keyword id="30334" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="acquisition">acquisition</keyword> of the year. Last year, it bought 11 companies. The largest deal was for human resources software company, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-taleo-2012-7">Taleo, for $1.9 billion.</a>

Oracle Thumbs Nose At Cisco And Buys Acme Packets for $2.1 billion

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="Stephen D/Flickr" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/550706c6ecad0435356828d8-960/interview-213.jpg"></a><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mydigitalslrcamera/">Stephen D/Flickr</a></div></div>If there's one thing that techies hate, it's interviewing for a job in tech.You'd think it'd be easier, right? After all, every company is soon to be a software company if you believe the Silicon Valley hype, which means that every company will soon need lots and lots more programmers.The problem is that it's actually really hard to assess whether or not somebody is a good programmer.Everybody thinks they're an expert, and it's often non-technical people like HR that get tapped to do the initial assessment.And so two things tend to happen when you interview for a tech job: You either get completely insane "skill" tests on <a href="http://seldo.com/weblog/2014/08/26/you_suck_at_technical_interviews">extremely basic knowledge</a> that have little to do with the job at hand, or else they turn to brainteasers, riddles, and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/glassdoor-2015-oddball-questions-2015-3">other weird stuff</a> designed to gauge your personality as much as your set of skills. Regardless, the result is the same: Really excellent coders find themselves without a job, while recruiters hire people with the wrong skills for the job they're hired to do. That's a problem that <a href="http://www.hackerrank.com">HackerRank</a>, a startup founded by ex-Amazon engineer and current CEO Vivek Ravisankar, wants to solve. On Amazon's Kindle team back in 2008, building the software that let people self-publish blogs to the e-reader store, Ravisankar had to conduct a lot of technical interviews. Over time, it became clear that the process was not great. "It's very hard to figure out how good a programmer is from looking at your resume," says Ravisankar, who left Amazon in 2009 to pursue the startup. HackerRank is a tool for automatically making programming tests, based on the skills that the company wants to test for, and then giving them a score based on their own algorithm. "Your 5 can be my 1.2," Ravisankar said. It's a pretty simple idea, but it was profound enough to get HackerRank into the prestigious Y Combinator startup accelerator program. Today, one million developers use it to compete in challenges and gauge their own skills, HackerRank claims, while big companies like Amazon, Riot Games, and Evernote use it in their own recruiting efforts. So far, HackerRank has raised $12.4 million from venture capital firms like Khosla Ventures and Battery Ventures. Now, HackerRank announces integration with the super-popular recruitment software Oracle Taleo, Greenhouse, and Jobvite, such that recruiters can instantly test job seekers and see their scores from right within the program.Again, simple, but profound - recruiters can see how good a candidate is straight from the software they're already using to find good future employees. There's an interesting side effect here, too. The traditional technical interview has the <a href="https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/technical-interviews-are-bullshit">bad habit of turning away women and minority groups</a> for the simple reason that they prioritize people who code in a similar way to the interviewer.A more objective score given by HackerRank could remove that barrier, ensuring candidates' applications live and die by their own merit."We're bringing in a huge change in recruiting," Ravisankar says. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/job-interview-cliches-answers-career-search-advice-2015-3">7 clichés you should never use in a job interview </a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="c5b25kbDp9Tt9EwhxiWkLF0i10dcpRp6" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

A former Amazon engineer's startup wants to fix the worst thing about tech job interviews

<table class="image-container float_right" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"></div><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonblessing">LinkedIn/Jason Blessing</a>Plex Systems CEO Jason Blessing</td></tr></table><keyword id="1765160" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Jason-Blessing">Jason Blessing</keyword> is the brand-new CEO of a hot <keyword id="1736990" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Enterprise-startup">enterprise startup</keyword>, <keyword id="1765161" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Plex-Systems">Plex Systems</keyword>, but it was a strange road that got him here.
Plex Systems offers <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> resource planning software to manufacturers, competing with <keyword id="43340" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Oracle">Oracle</keyword>, SAP, and Infor.
It's based in a suburb of Detroit, Auburn Hills, in Blessing's home state of Michigan. Plex poached Blessing after it scored a $30 million investment from Accel Partners in December.
Not only did they offer him the CEO title—his dream job—but the company is near his beloved alma mater University of Michigan, where he can finally use his football season tickets.
"I will take those to the grave with me," he told Business Insider.
To get here, Blessing had to escape the clutches of Oracle, twice.
Blessing was a vice president running PeopleSoft's consulting business when Oracle launched the nastiest hostile takeover in software history. At one point, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison even <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-shooting-dog-2012-6">jokingly threatened to shoot PeopleSoft's CEO</a>.
Oracle won the battle and in 2004 Blessing was surprised to find his new employer was "good for me."
"Oracle gave PeopleSoft employees great opportunities," he said.
He went on to run a big regional consulting operation for Oracle.
But he left in two years later to join Taleo, a startup lead by ex-PeopleSoft alum Mike Gregoire.
Blessing ran product development starting with six employees and growing his team to 580 before Oracle came calling again.
Gregoire was no fan of Oracle or Larry Ellison. He described <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ceo-of-the-company-oracle-just-bought-for-19-billion-was-once-tortured-by-oracle-2012-2">the hostile takeover as "18 months of continuous bombardment."</a>
But for $1.9 billion, he sold to Oracle anyway.
So Blessing was again an Oracle employee.
A few months later, Plex Systems called "out of the blue" and offered him his second escape.
A happy ending.

How Jason Blessing Slipped Out Of Larry Ellison's Grasp Twice

<table class="image-container float_right" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"></div>Julie Bort/Business InsiderOracle CEO Larry Ellison speaking at OpenWorld 2012</td></tr></table><keyword id="43340" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Oracle">Oracle</keyword> spent six years developing its new software-as-a-service cloud called Fusion, it's largest-ever R&amp;D effort.
While Oracle says Fusion is doing well (it booked <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-says-his-cloud-is-beating-the-pants-off-big-rival-workday-2012-12">$230 million in revenue the last reported quarter</a>), market researcher Forrester j<a href="http://www.forrester.com/home#/Oracles+Dilemma+Applications+Unlimited+Versus+Oracle+Fusion+Applications/quickscan/-/E-RES82763">ust published</a> a report with some shockingly bad stats about it.
Forrester surveyed 139 Oracle customers and found that nearly none of them had plans to use Fusion. (64% said they planned to upgrade to the Oracle software they are using and another quarter said they had no plans for Fusion or for an upgrade).
Oracle says it has 400 customers for Fusion. However, last October, Oracle senior VP Chris Leone acknowledged that of the 400, only about 100 at that time were really using it "in production," meaning to run their businesses, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/oracle-lays-out-app-agenda-cloud-mobile/240008266">reported InformationWeek's Doug Henschen.</a>
"If Oracle Fusion Applications are the future for Oracle, most Oracle users haven't gotten the memo," the Forrester report says.
Oracle needs Fusion to be a hit because "in recent quarters, Oracle’s application revenue growth has underperformed both the overall software market and SAP," Forrester said, adding that Oracle's acquisitions of software-as-a-service companies, like Taleo and RightNow Technologies, hasn't been enough, so far, "to take up the slack."
<div class="image-container click-to-enlarge" style="width:620px"><div class="image"><a title_source="Forrester" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/511c0cff69beddf81000000b-960/oracle-vs-sap-quarters-chart.png"></a></div>Forrester</div>
Oracle had no comment on this report. However a source inside the company said that Forrester's survey took place in June, and called the data "outdated."
We'll add that it's still early for Fusion and Oracle has plenty of time before it needs to hit the panic button.
Whether it can convince its customers to move or not, Oracle still needs this cloud. Right now, Fusion is helping Oracle win business away WorkDay, the company founded by Larry Ellison's old nemesis, Dave Duffield, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-says-his-cloud-is-beating-the-pants-off-big-rival-workday-2012-12">Ellison says</a>.

Oracle's Customers Are Not Interested In Its Super Important New Cloud, Analyst Says

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/anirudhkoul/4646989519/sizes/o/">Flickr/Anirudh Koul</a></div>"<keyword id="1761501" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Shadow-IT">Shadow IT</keyword>" is the latest buzzword for when employees buy their own <keyword id="6354741" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Apps">apps</keyword> and use them at work.
In a 2012 survey, PricewaterhouseCoopers found that as much as one-third of the money companies spent on technology was for these "shadow IT" apps.
Sometimes employees buy apps to get their work done faster. Sometimes the apps are really for fun, but they've loaded them on their PCs, smartphone, or tablets connected to corporate networks.
A startup that launched last week, <a href="http://www.skyhighnetworks.com/news/press_releases/11/detail/">Skyhigh Networks</a>, helps IT departments discover these shadow apps so IT departments can stop or control them. It's been in beta with a handful of Fortune 2,000 companies like Cisco and General Electric.
Based on the scans it's done with its beta customers, <keyword id="1761502" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Skyhigh">Skyhigh</keyword> came up with a list of the top 50 shadow IT apps that employees use at work. Most of these we've heard of, but a few surprised us.
Here they are, in order of how many people use them.
<ol>
<li>Facebook</li>
<li>Dropbox</li>
<li>Google Mail</li>
<li>Apple iCloud</li>
<li>LinkedIn</li>
<li>Disqus (an app for leaving comments on Web sites)</li>
<li>Salesforce</li>
<li>Amazon Web Services (Amazon's cloud that hosts files and apps)</li>
<li>Hotmail</li>
<li>Box</li>
<li>Amazon S3 (Amazon's storage cloud)</li>
<li>Google Apps</li>
<li>Evernote (note taking app)</li>
<li>Twitter</li>
<li>Microsoft Office 365 (Microsoft's cloud version of MS Office)</li>
<li>4shared (file sharing)</li>
<li>RightNow (Customer support app bought by Oracle in 2011)</li>
<li>Mozy (Online backup and storage)</li>
<li>AOL</li>
<li>Sourceforge (a site that stores and shares open-sourced apps)</li>
<li>Netsuite (cloud ERP app)</li>
<li>Marketo (manages marketing campaigns)</li>
<li>Flickr</li>
<li>VeriSign Geotrust (<keyword id="6355300" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="security">security</keyword> app that ensures a Web site is safe)</li>
<li>Google Analytics</li>
<li>YouSendIt (file sharing)</li>
<li>New Relic (troubleshoots problems with Web apps)</li>
<li>Taleo (HR cloud app bought by Oracle in 2012)</li>
<li>Slideshare (Powerpoint presentations online)</li>
<li>Workday (HR app)</li>
<li>Carbonite (automatic, secure backup and storage)</li>
<li>Docusign (electronic signatures for legal, business documents)</li>
<li>Prezi (online presentations)</li>
<li>Typekit (adds fancy fonts to a website)</li>
<li>Skype</li>
<li>Sliderocket (online presentation tools)</li>
<li>Github (open-source projects and job site for developers)</li>
<li>Cloudfiles (file sharing)</li>
<li>SugarSync (file sharing)</li>
<li>PagerDuty (texting app for IT emergencies)</li>
<li>Bitbucket (stores open source projects)</li>
<li>Intuit Quickbase (creates custom business apps)</li>
<li>Constant Contact (email marketing)</li>
<li>Xobni (connects your Inbox to your social networks)</li>
<li>Snapfish (web photo printing)</li>
<li>Spiceworks (social network for IT professionals)</li>
<li>Olark (adds chat to your website)</li>
<li>Symantec Brightmail (email spam/security)</li>
<li>Addthis (adds social features/buttons to Websites)</li>
<li>Screencast (cloud storage)</li>
</ol>

The Top 50 Apps Employees Sneak Into Work

No matter how successful you become, no matter where your career takes you, everyone starts somewhere. We asked six hugely successful tech CEOs to tell us about their humble beginnings.
We got some great stories, written by the CEOs themselves, about their first jobs and their oddest jobs.
These include tales of being held up at gunpoint, working at a nasty pollution control plant, measuring electricity output from manholes, and hauling people's belongings around for a moving company.
Read on ...

<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right" style="width:300px"><div class="image on-image"><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/video/74612483-palo-alto-networks-ceo-on-hack-attacks.html">Bloomberg TV</a></div></div>Mark McLaughlin, <keyword id="456992" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Palo-Alto-Networks">Palo Alto Networks</keyword> CEO: flying Cobra helicopters at age 22</h3>
McLaughlin leads Palo Alto Networks, an IPO darling of 2012, currently valued at $3.3 billion. He is the former CEO of Verisign, which sold to Symantec in 2010 for $1.2 billion.
What was the first job you ever had?
Many jobs. Mowed lawns starting at 12. Pumped gas at 15 (and got held up at gunpoint one night).
Worked 2 jobs at from 16 to 18. McDonald's after school during the week and bagged groceries at Acme on weekends. I grew up in Philadelphia, working class neighborhood, so this was not unusual.
What was the strangest, oddest job you ever had?
<div>
I started off my career flying Cobra helicopters because my first job was as an attack helicopter pilot for the US Army. I was 22 years old and was enlisted for two years, then heading off to law school. 
</div>
Note: In his time in the US Army, Mark earned an Army Commendation Medal and Airborne Wings.

<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right" style="width:300px"><div class="image on-image"><keyword id="1754170" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="DataGravity">DataGravity</keyword></div></div>Paula Long, CEO, DataGravity: Pickin' tobacco </h3>
DataGravity is a storage startup still in stealth mode, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-paula-longs-new-42-million-startup-is-an-ingenius-way-to-do-big-data-2013-3">that's raised $42 million of investment.</a> Long previously co-founded EqualLogic, a storage company bought by Dell for $1.4 billion in 2008.
What was the first job you ever had? 
Working on a shade tobacco farm in Connecticut (a tobacco grown under shade in the Connecticut River Valley, used primarily for binder and wrapper for premium cigars.). I was 14 and I did it for two summers. 
What was the strangest, oddest job you ever had? 
[I worked on ] artificial intelligence and engineering robots. I learned [about] moving robot arms on an assembly line using gears, servo-motors and cables.

<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right" style="width:300px"><div class="image on-image"><keyword id="155272" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="CA-Technologies">CA Technologies</keyword></div></div>CA Technologies CEO Mike Gregoire: A dirty job fighting pollution</h3>
CA Technologies is a 37-year-old <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> software company with $4.6 billion in revenue. Prior to CA, Gregoire was CEO of Taleo and sold it to Oracle in 2012 for $1.9 billion.
What was the first job you ever had?
I delivered furniture for a furniture delivery service on Saturdays and sometimes after school. I was 15 and they went out of business after about a year.
What was the strangest, oddest job you ever had? 
I was a general laborer at a pollution control plant. Lots of nasty stuff can happen at a place like that. It was a unionized shop and the other student that worked and I were only supposed to cut the grass and do outside work. But when there were really nasty things to clean, [we] students often got the privilege of a hard day's work.
I learned that I was not well suited to not having any control over my work product. I like things that are more creative and the day-in day-out. Where everything is the same sounds comforting, but just did not work for me.

<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right" style="width:300px"><div class="image on-image"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidberlind/3328976161/">Flicker/dberlind</a></div></div>Jayshree Ullal, <keyword id="356018" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Arista-Networks">Arista Networks</keyword> CEO: working with manholes </h3>
Ullal is the "Marissa Mayer" of the enterprise network industry. Arista is a hot startup taking a bite out of Cisco and on track for a 2014 IPO with a $2.5 billion valuation. Prior to Arista, Ullal ran Cisco's bread-and-butter routing, switching business, leading it to $10B in annual revenue. 
What was the first job you ever had?
Cashier at Woolworths, also duplicating keys, catching fish from the tank and making pizzas! I was 16 and I did for three years as a student.
What was the strangest, oddest job you ever had?
I was an electrical engineer intern at PG&amp;E. My job was to measure and verify the power current and voltage ratings at every manhole to right size the electrical grid for the (then) new Moscone center in San Francisco.
The odd thing was, because it was unionized, I was escorted and driven from manhole to manhole every 100 yards in a PG&amp;E truck!
Then I would go down the steep ladder into the dingy manhole with my hard hat and flash light encountering cobwebs along the way.
I learned that engineers are free spirited and not as structured as 9-5 employees governed by unions.

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right" style="width:300px"><div class="image on-image">Business Insider/Julie Bort<keyword id="593275" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Infor">Infor</keyword> CEO Charles Phillips</div></div>
<h3>Charles Phillips, Infor CEO: Hauling refrigerators up stairs</h3>
Phillips runs Infor, an enterprise software company challenging SAP and Oracle with about $3 billion in revenue. Before that, he was the No. 2 guy to Larry Ellison at Oracle.
What was the first job you ever had?
My first job was at age 13 going door to door with my dad's lawn mower and cutting grass. My dad made me pay him back for the gas he bought for me to teach me about the cost of goods sold.
I finally figured out that most customers had their own lawn mowers with gas already paid for sitting inside of it.
So I would offer to use their lawn mower if they preferred which most did and that saved me the gas money and I didn't have the push the mower around town.
What was the strangest, oddest job you ever had?
Working for a moving company at 16 was my worst job. People tell you they have a few small things that could fit in half a truck and then you arrive and they have two refrigerators up two flights of stairs.
Or you'd drive 5 miles only to learn they changed their mind and want to move tomorrow or their roommate was claiming half their stuff and you can't figure out what to load until they work it out or not. 
I learned to qualify prospective customers over the phone quickly and estimate how much stuff a family would have depending on how many kids, how many rooms, and where they lived. Early predictive analytics.
Then I got job at 17 to develop an application for printing debit memos for a retail branch of a bank. That was my first job in the computer industry.
But the most exciting and different job was of course the Marines. It was the first job I had where every single person had an insanely intense focus on doing their job well mainly because they didn't want to endanger their teammates.
That's where I learned that getting people to inspire each and peer reinforcement is actually more powerful than one general barking commands.

<div>
<h3><keyword id="183644" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Jim-Whitehurst">Jim Whitehurst</keyword>, <keyword id="183292" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Red-Hat">Red Hat</keyword> CEO: fixing an airline on 9/11</h3>
Whitehurst is running Linux software company Red Hat, which generated $1.3 billion in revenue last year on <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/red-hat-is-still-on-target-to-hit-3-billion-in-revenues-by-2016-ceo-says-2013-3">track to be $3 billion by 2016.</a> Before Red Hat Whitehurst was COO of Delta Airlines.
What was the first job you ever had?
Within months of getting my driver's license, I got my first job as a part-time computer programmer for a stockbroker.
It is easy to forget that in the 1980s, computers and programming were not nearly as pervasive (or popular) as they are today. I had been interested in computers for a couple of years by then.
My prized possession was my Kaypro II with 64K RAM and dual floppies. I was tasked with building a computer program that would perform contact management, tracking interactions with potential and current clients. I wish I understood the value of such a system back then. Good thing Marc Benioff did. (Thank you, Salesforce.com.)
I still keep in touch with my first boss, Murray Solomon.
What was the strangest, oddest job you ever had?
While not necessarily the strangest or oddest job, one worth mentioning would be becoming "Acting Treasurer" of Delta at noon on 9/11, when I was still a partner at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The CEO of Delta at the time called me and said "we need you now". That was definitely jumping into the deep end. I knew very little about treasury.
I remember going over to the Treasurer's office - which was empty because it was an open position at the time - pulling the dust cover off the desk, sitting down and thinking "what have I gotten myself into"?
My key lesson out of doing that over the next couple of months - I officially joined Delta in January - was that it's OK to admit that you don't know things. I said "I have no idea" almost daily. 
Too many people worry that saying "I don't know" is a weakness. It's not - pretending you know when you don't is the weakness.
(Here's the full story of how <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-red-hats-ceo-owes-his-career-to-911-2012-2">Whitehurst changed his career on 9/11</a>)
</div>

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