Why do you think that a CTO has to be highly technical? Does a CTO at a big technology company write code? Line level engineering managers don't even write code a lot of the time. You just deal in the high-level abstract.
He's got to be on top of all the industry trends. Say what you will about Larry, he is on top of this.
Really? That isn't obvious to me by what Oracle has done over the past 10-15 years.
Their course corrections have been as good as any large company. Even if the product wasn't there, they caught many of the biggest trends. Even Microsoft didn't see the internet coming.