Here are 12 of the most important executives leading Oracle's big push to take on Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in the cloud

• Oracle is known as a major enterprise IT player, but it has struggled for a bigger presence in the fast-growing cloud market which is dominated by Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
• These 12 executives are leading Oracle's bid to expand its reach in cloud computing.
• They are focused on leveraging Oracle's strengths in database, security and applications to gain a bigger piece of the cloud market.
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Oracle has been known as an enterprise tech powerhouse for more than 40 years, but the Silicon Valley giant is viewed as a minor player in what has become a critical arena of that market: the cloud.

This was underscored recently in the battle over the Pentagon's JEDI cloud project. In affirming its decision to reject Oracle's bid and name Microsoft and Amazon as the finalists for the $10 billion public cloud contract, the Pentagon said, "Oracle is not in the same class as Microsoft and Amazon Web Services."

Oracle is a top vendor in cloud software, but in the broader cloud market, it has struggled against rivals like Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

One problem is that it's been hard for Oracle, which was launched in 1977, to break away from the old ways of selling software to enterprises, which is involves hefty licensing agreements and maintenance fees, said analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group.

"Oracle's leadership doesn't know the cloud," he told Business Insider. "The top leadership of Oracle is largely living in the 1980s from the standpoint of the business model, and that model doesn't appear to work for cloud businesses."

That's probably a key reason why the company founded by billionaire Larry Ellison, who is now the company's chief technology officer, has turned to some outsiders - including from rivals that now dominate the cloud, like Amazon and Microsoft - in its bid for a bigger presence in the cloud.

This push is so critical for the company that many of these executives on this list - which is based on input from analysts, news coverage of the company and from Oracle itself - report to Ellison himself.

Here are 12 executives leading Oracle's cloud offensive: