New Delhi, April 9 -- This week Oracle announced the hiring of a new chief financial officer, Hilary Maxson. This wouldn't be that notable were it not for the dramatic transition happening at Oracle as it adds a rapidly growing cloud computing unit to its software offerings. Maxson was brought in to manage Oracle's accelerating fundraising and spending for artificial intelligence.

Maxson isn't the usual candidate for the CFO of a software and cloud services company like Oracle. She comes from Schneider Electric, a manufacturer of industrial electrical equipment, including for power plants and data centers. Before that, she was with AES, a power generator. In the company's press release announcing the hire, Oracle co-CEO Clay Magouyrk sai...