Computer & Communication Industry Association

Computer & Communication Industry Association (or CCIA) is an advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. which represents large players in the computer, Internet, information technology, and telecommunications industries. According to their site, CCIA "promotes open markets, open systems, open networks, and full, fair, and open competition." are an anti- group that has been active in the promotion of various patent reforms that would weaken patent protection, especially for software. This campaign is largely seen as an anti- alliance.

Oracle Corporation ( specializes in developing and marketing products — particularly . Through organic growth and a number of high-profile acquisitions, Oracle enlarged its share of the software market. By 2007 Oracle ranked third on the list of largest software companies in the world, after and Subsequently it became larger than IBM after its acquisition of

The corporation has arguably become best-known due to association with its . The company also builds tools for , middle-tier (ERP), (CRM) and (SCM) software.

The founder and Oracle Corporation, has served as Oracle's CEO throughout the company's history. Ellison also served as the until his replacement by in 2004. Ellison retains his role as CEO.

Ellison took inspiration from the 1970 paper written by on relational named "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks". had heard about the from an article in the IBM Research Journal provided by (a future co-founder of Oracle Corporation). System R also derived from Codd's theories, and Ellison wanted to make his Oracle product compatible with System R, but IBM stopped this by keeping the error codes for their DBMS secret. Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL). In 1979 SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc. (RSI). In 1982, RSI renamed itself as Oracle align itself more closely with its flagship product . At this stage served as the company's senior programmer.

On April 20, 2009 Oracle announced it was acquiring