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Softwar : An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison
Matthew Symonds took a leave of absence from The Economist in March 2000 to follow Ellison in his daily routines, his management meetings, his sales calls and his regattas. But he is not the only author of the book. After the manuscript was ready by Symonds' standards, Larry Ellison took over the footnotes. Both co-authors agreed not to change each other's text, but Ellison felt he had to clarify certain points about his life, career, and vision. Softwar is somewhere in the middle between biography and autobiography -- the life of Larry Ellison is retold by another author, although the book is uniquely personal with Ellison's remarks constantly adding to the personal touch of the book. Statements like "It was a big mistake, and it was my mistake. I didn't think that Microsoft Windows would crush IBM OS/2 and all the other desktop systems -- but it did" allow Ellison to showcase his personal viewpoint in a straightforward and succinct manner.
Unlike many biographies, Softwar doesn't start with Ellison's poverty-ridden childhood in a poor Russian-immigrant family, where he was an adopted kid. That story comes much later, but from the Chapter 1 we're involved in Oracle's selling process, with Ellison talking to the Japanese executives, Ellison giving a keynote speech, Ellison talking to his sales reps - it's all about Ellison, and it's all about selling. Rarely in the book will you see a description of the actual coding process or any description of software development practices at Oracle, which by revenue ranks second among the global software corporations. It's all about sales calls, support calls, commissions, discounts and sales numbers in the million and billion dollar range - Ellison is as concentrated on the financial revenues as a CEO could possibly be.
A supporter of open standards, Ellison does not like the cacophony of enterprise-scale products offered to the companies. "If Detroit ran like Silicon Valley, nobody would sell cars -- just parts", he proclaims. "Customers would have to figure out which were the best parts -- a Honda engine, a Ford transmission, a BMW chassis, GM electrical system -- and buy them and try to assemble them into a working car. Good luck. I know it sounds crazy, but that's how companies put together business systems today".
Since Symonds followed Ellison everywhere he went, the readers get to see Ellison's lifestyle, observe his Japanese gardens in Atherton, meet with Oracle vice-presidents and sales people, follow him in regattas, while listening to a heavy dose of why Oracle E-Business Suite is going to revolutionize many businesses around the country.
The author covers Ray Lane's departure from Oracle in great detail, while Ellison is profuse with comments on why Lane needed to be let go. Market moves of Oracle's main competitors -- Siebel, SAP and PeopleSoft -- are also followed closely, with obligatory disparaging remarks coming from Ellison about what's wrong with each competitor's business. Sometimes I felt the book got too much into describing Oracle politics, like departmental and subdivisional re-organizations with pointers on who was managing which operation, but perhaps the book would lose detail without it. If you have been employed at Oracle, or know some of the people personally, perhaps it's interesting; most of the time the descriptions of policy changes in sales force compensation is perhaps too mundane for a biographical book.
For instance, on page 139 Symonds describes Lane's pending departure to become the CEO of Novell. Symonds presents Lane's point of view:
"He said he'd talked to the board and he thought $2.5 million in options was the right number. You deserve it. I thought he'd gone way overboard, so of course I stayed. I didn't find out until I left Oracle that the board was pissed off about this. No one ever told me, and I certainly wasn't holding Oracle up for money."Lane's quote is followed by an asterisk with a footnote from Ellison: "Not a holdup? He said he was going to Novell because of the money. I offered him more money to stay. It was a classic holdup. He stayed."
This book being a recent publication, it covers a lot of Oracle products in detail, supplemented by Ellison's viewpoints on how this or that product is going to change a certain business or industry. While Oracle is hardly a household name outside the IT field, the author makes a great effort to explain Oracle server product family in simple terms, without going too basic. Competition (and general resentment) with Microsoft runs throughout the company, and Ellison is not afraid to accentuate it. Mark Jarvis, a senior marketing official, supplied an interesting quote about Microsoft's practices and current Linux outlook: "Linux is the first thing that customers ask about. They love it." And as for Microsoft, "When they felt threatened by Netscape, it was just another company with a known HQ that could go out and bomb. But that won't work with Linux, just as it didn't work with Apache. Apache creamed them, and so will Linux. Microsoft has lost the server war."
Softwar provides an interesting insight into one of the largest software corporations, its business practices and famous personality of its chief executive officer. While this book prefers not to discuss the burned-up Ferraris on Highway 101 and personal jet fighters, we see Ellison as a serious and dedicated businessman. Ellison shares his experience from the past mistakes, talks about the current practices, and what he sees best for the company, emphasizes the idea of network computer as still useful and applicable to desktops, envisions Linux taking over the world (with Oracle supplying a lot of backend databases) and provides his insight into the future of technology. The book is a great read for those willing to find out more about Oracle or Ellison personally, as well as a primer on technology development and its future (from Oracle standpoint).
You can purchase Softwar from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
There's currently a story on Larry Ellison at silicon.com.
I love the first line: "Outside now... pistols, swords or databases, you decide..."
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
The article listed as an example of his great interviews, is just some vapid, empty, boring, dull, pice of shitty crap from some chick magazine masquerading as a men's magazine. Big info: Ellison has a personal tailor. Ooooooo. He risks his life in boats - he is a man. Ooooooo. He is a playboy stud. Ooooooo.
I'm going to go read a cereal box now. Anything will be stimulating after that.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
"overrated"?
I feel it my duty to warn people off from the Askmen link. Here is an example:
You know, this article doesn't even say "database". Of course, it's on one of those horrible ad sites so the content is well disguised. If you want a better article, see Pingulars oddly modified post. Or what about Sunderland56's post about Ellison Abuse links on google? Also oddly modified
These are interesting - Askmen is just "Seventeen" in disguise. It's a link to set cookies for advertisers (if you aren't a rejecter). It is NOT a geek magazine. Utterly useless. And the odd modifications of substantive information makes me wonder whether it's tin foil hat time here on Slashdot.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I had some personal contact with L. E.
ethical is about the last word I would use to describe him.
This space available.
Oracle has chased multi-million dollar businesses right out of its management structure - and then spent millions trying to duplicate this competing software to (re)capture market share.
I would be really interested to hear Larry's take on Oracle's mistakes. I'd also like to hear how he plans to compete with a free product from SAP-MySQL that begins to implement the equivalent features of his database.
As a Sr. Oracle DBA who has experience on a variety of Database systems as well as coding, architecture, and QA, I must say that Larry owes me time in that Garden of his.
Oracle is built like a GM car in 1972 - badly. It started as a powerful database engine that has now got so much... crap... tacked onto it that is a kludgy mess. Larry wants to be the next Enterprise System of Everything (tm). It's rather like going back to IBM in the sixties - one system, one shop, one software, one hefty price.
A running joke in California is the established list of consultant fees for the State Government. Oracle has the highest rate per hour. The next highest consultant fees are for Nobel Prize-winning think tank consultants.
Larry was THE man with THE right answer at THE right time - a powerful database with SQL that resided on multiple platforms of the day. His salesmanship has parlied it into Software #2. But is his vision anything more than Market Hype nowadays?
Oracle is still plagued by Theta style (WHERE clause) joins, while SQL Server has used JOIN systex. To get Oracle to run well and keep it running requires a lot of knowledge, much of it "tribal". I personally don't mind it much, as being a "high priest" of oracle secrets keeps me employed and my databases running.
I am encouraged by Larry's continued support of Java and simplifying his price schedule, but how much of this is in reaction to the SQL Server threat?
Quite honestly, I find SQL Server a breeze to work with compared to oracle - and most of my fellow DBS's have agreed with me (well, 4 out of 5).
This rant ends, as mine always do, with a trip to the bathroom.
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men w