Safra Catz

Catz, who shuns the spotlight, has had a busy year, beginning with a major overhaul of Oracle’s contracting process. The goal? To simplify and speed up the way customers buy cloud-based ­offerings—a growing business for Oracle. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016, nearly two-thirds of Oracle’s cloud deals were inked via the new process. Still, annual revenue came in at $37 billion, down 3% from the year before. Even as cloud sales have gone up, revenue from so-called on-premise technology, Oracle’s legacy business, has declined. Looks like there is more work to do.