Perhaps because he has his own island in Hawaii and another America's Cup to concentrate on now, Larry Ellison announced today that he's stepping down as CEO to take on a smaller role as "CTO and Executive Chairman, as the Business Times reports.

In Ellison's place it sounds like there will be co-CEOs, with responsibilities split between execs Safra Catz and Mark Hurd. Hurd, as you may recall, left HP to join Oracle in 2010.

Per the Business Times, "Oracle's operations will be divvied up with Catz handling manufacturing, finance and legal functions; and Hurd controlling sales, service and industry verticals."

An Oracle employee who prefers to remain anonymous tells SFist that the company at large had not yet been informed of the change by official email or other announcement this afternoon. They assumed the news must have been relayed during a sales call among the company's higher-ups.

[SF Business Times]