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Informix nabs former Oracle exec

Database software firm Informix names a former Oracle executive as the company's new vice president of sales in North America.

Kim Girard
Kim Girard has written about business and technology for more than a decade, as an editor at CNET News.com, senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine and online writer at Red Herring. As a freelancer, she's written for publications including Fast Company, CIO and Berkeley's Haas School of Business. She also assisted Business Week's Peter Burrows with his 2003 book Backfire, which covered the travails of controversial Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. An avid cook, she's blogged about the joy of cheap wine and thinks about food most days in ways some find obsessive.
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Kim Girard
Database software firm Informix today named a former Oracle executive as the company's new vice president of sales in North America.

Philip Rugani joins Informix from Oracle, where he was group vice president of the company's General Business and Alliances Organization for the Americas.

At Oracle, Rugani focused on carving out new business in the midrange market.

Previously, he worked in sales at Bay Networks, Digital Equipment, and Motorola.

With the Rugani appointment, Menlo Park, California-based Informix is continuing to rebuild its executive ranks. In January, the company snagged Howard Bain, 52, former CFO at software developer Symantec, as its new executive vice president, finance, and chief financial officer.

Informix has moved to position itself for a comeback in recent quarters, shifting its product line to target growth areas.

The firm, which suffered several rocky financial years after a series of setbacks, has struggled to regain profitability by targeting new areas for its database software, including e-commerce, financial analysis, and data warehousing.

Under that new strategy, the firm's fourth-quarter profit more than tripled, beating estimates, bolstered by a 12-percent increase in database software sales.