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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.
So is the reason for the Peoplesoft acquisition because they want to put a competitor out of business or take it over because they want peoplesoft's software maintanance ?
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are you on bad crack? It's $19.60 at Amazon, not $24.95.
Does it detail his support of the H1B/L1 visa programs or his desire to drive US programmers wages down to the levels of Indian programmers?
What about the use of H1B/L1 visa 'labor' to replace higher paid US labor at there offies in the US?
Is any of that covered?
As to those who say that H1B's have to be paid the same wages as Americans, please check. That was tied to the higher number of allowed visas and I do not think it applies any more.
Yeah, this guy is worse than Scott McNealy. He rants on Microsoft destroying innovation in the technology industry. But when's the last time Oracle actually came out with a new innovative product? The most forward thinking thing they have done was port Oracle to run on Linux early on.
Then he rants about IBM's software and hardware business dying and them only selling services. Guess what Larry, the hardware and software businesses for 20-year old concepts like operating systems and relational databases is dying. And Linux is leading that trend, by commoditizing the software, and creating value in the support and services sector. People are willing to pay IBM for building new systems for them, but they don't want to continue spending ridiculous amounts of money on licenses ever year for your database software.
So, there is no mention of Oracle's technical
strengths (like MVCC?) And, isn't Oracle to
Postgres as Windows to Linux? Sounds like a
crappy book!
...While this book prefers not to discuss the burned-up Ferraris on Highway 101 and personal jet fighters...
I don't know about you guys, but those sound like good parts.
He tried to buy a Russian MiG jet fighter, but US customs wouldn't allow it and he blatantly upset San Jose-area officials by landing his private jet after the 11pm curfew imposed in the area. When you have $50 billion in the bank, a $10,000 fine seems like pocket change. Any guy who likes to defy convention and authorities, and flies fighter jets for fun, has to be cool. It's part of the definition
I want more of those kinds of stories. For those of of un in the technology sector (most of the slashdot readership, I'm sure) we've seen most of Larry's career develop I think. Sure, a biography like this will have some stuff we all missed, but juicy tidbits like the jet fighter can't be left out.
[ http://www.dvigroup.net/self ]
I know the old joke about God not thinking he's Larry Ellison seems like an exaggeration, but Ellison's ego is uncontainable. I'd never seen him speak until I saw the segment about him on Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds PBS series. I was immediately repulsed by him. The man is obsessed with not only winning, but showing up his competitors. That's the difference between Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. Gates doesn't (publicly, at least) give a shit about Ellison. Ellison's obsessed with beating Gates.
There are a lot of huge egos in the computer industry, but none are larger than Larry Ellison's.
Ok, so Apache kills IIS and Linux kills Windows in the server space. How is it that MySQL, postgreSQL, et al don't kill Oracle? Why is Oracle spared when the rest of the proprietary software industry falls victim to commoditization?
Just wondering.
The funny thing about Larry Ellison in Silicon Valley is that he's mostly ignored here. He has the database business, but nobody else in the Valley does much in that area. His ventures into new technologies like thin clients, video streaming, and supercomputers have all been duds. Oracle is viewed as a large but boring enterprise applications company like Computer Associates, SAP, or Automatic Data Processing.
The point he is making, though, is that the average customer buys the whole car (if the point is to be able to go from point A to point B; the business process). But nobody takes care of the 20,000 foot view of their business needs in one step. Instead, they seem to work on "projects", buying different parts, and hope that they can get them all to work together seamlessly. Could this be a big reason why Microsoft will lose the server war? They try to offer a suite of enterprise-ish components that are supposed to work seamlessly, but it seems that there are open source components that work faster/better and are free. Thus, many companies seem more willing as the minutes tick by, to make use of said components with custom implementation, saving money while gaining flexibility and freedom from proprietary requirements.
He, working for Microsoft, wishes the industry ran more like Detroit and the mindset was such that people were willing to pay out the nose for a complete package of services and applications as they hoped when they planned out their company strategy. If you are to own a fleet of trucks, you get big discounts becuase you will service your own fleet and the manufacturer is released from most of the warranty. Your aunt needs Toyota to make sure her car runs while under warranty.
Microsoft is very lucky that the home user does indeed need a "complete solution". The Linux distro install CDs go a long way to appealing to the traditional home user. But the games that you need Microsoft to play, and getting your computer pre-loaded with an OS and many tools/plugins needed for consumer internet browsing is why Microsoft really has a leg up on Linux. Until a major manufacturer starts shipping with a desktop Linux distro with Gaim (can't a distro just come ready to emulate Windows if necessary?), Flash/Shockwave/Real/Acrobat/Quicktime capabilities on by default when they first boot up, it will be tought to ever appeal to a mass market...
Oracle is staying ahead because multiversioning reads are a better database design for 24/7 hybrid (OLTP/OLAP) systems (i.e. ecommerce and just about everything else).
PostgreSQL is the only other product out there (including MS-SQL Server, DB2, Postgress, Informix, Sybase and MySQL(unpatched)) in which reads don't block writes and vice-versa.
The row level locking is also an original design in Oracle, where SQL Server and DB2 it is an add-on and both of them will eventually run out of row level locking resources and escalate to table locking.
I worked for Oracle, we actually called it "Whoracle". It was one of the worst experiences of my working life.
As for analogies, if I could have a car with a Honda engine, American styling, etc. then I'd be a happy person. Oracle certainly doesn't do everything right, they have a good database and that's about it. It's incredible overkill for most mid-sized business though, yet they cram it down the throat of everyone they can.
Ellison is no genius, his core business was actually built on the infinite resources of U.S. Military Black Ops contracts. Sure he hates Gates and MS, but only because he didn't get there himself.
Regards, Lex
I wrote a paper on this guy for school.. he's easily the most colorful of the big name tech CEOs today. When I wrote my paper, I used:
The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison : *God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison
by Mike Wilson (Author)
and
The Oracle of Oracle: The Story of Volatile CEO Larry Ellison and the Strategies Behind His Company's Phenomenal Success
by Florence M. Stone
The Difference between God and Ellison was a great read and was very well written. I'd avoid the Oracle of Oracle... it's poorly written.
I'm not sure I like Ellison, but he wins for Chutzpah and style... I always laugh when I hear what he's up to.