Kindle Notes & Highlights
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December 2, 2020 - February 20, 2023
outstrips even Comdex as the largest computer show in the world.
vertiginous
deferential
ambivalence
confided
transactional integrity
throughput
The answer, he argued, was to give U.S. sales its own contracts and finance organization.
Huge discounts were offered to induce customers to buy software they wouldn’t need for years; risks were taken in selling to companies that didn’t have the money to pay their bills; exotic barter deals were entered into. In one, Oracle was given a couple of jets by Israeli Aircraft Industries in exchange for software.5
doggedly
It was always the same thing: the product didn’t work; I never ordered the product; the salesman said I didn’t have to pay until whenever . . .” Squire, an accountant by training, remembers that the cash position was so bad that at one point Oracle was within $3 million of its overdraft limit.
comeuppance.
abdication
All I had to do was keep legal and accounting organized as separate control functions, and a lot of the problems we had in ’90–’91 could have been avoided.
You cannot run a company without strong checks and balances.”
fervor
frivolity,
strictures
consternation,
but to Ellison, the alternative of losing those customers for good would have been worse.11
Perhaps Ellison’s gravest fault was being instrumental in allowing the firm’s cash position to become so nearly terminal.
Accounting is a control function and should always be separate from sales and development. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand that at the time.
I did not release Version 6 of our database, or any other software product for that matter, knowing there were serious bugs in the product. When you rewrite a large portion of a complex product, as we did with Oracle Version 6, it is virtually impossible to test thoroughly enough to find all the bugs. Unfortunately, you do not discover some of the bugs until the product is in use by customers.
prima donna
two-phase commit.
unpalatable
so I hired McKinsey to do a study and collect data on our customers and business practices.
cold-shouldered
crumpled-up
I wanted a deal; I just didn’t want to give up any Oracle equity, so I slowed down the negotiating process. Time was on our side. Every day our cash position got stronger, so our negotiating position got stronger.
If you work in Silicon Valley long enough, you can’t help noticing how much the technology industry resembles the women’s clothing business. Both are fashion-driven. Fashionable ideas are hot, while the others are not. In the early ’90s, VOD was fashionable and everyone—Oracle, Microsoft, Sun—was doing VOD. These days “Web services” are hot, so everyone is doing and talking about Web services. If you are out of step with the latest fashion in the tech industry, the tech analysts say nasty things about you and you don’t get your picture on the cover of magazines.
SAP had carefully nurtured relationships within the Big Five consulting firms, especially with Andersen Consulting, the largest systems integrator in the world.
Instead, they would ask one of the consultancies, usually one with which they had an existing relationship, to evaluate their business processes and then recommend the software that would best fit their requirements.
naïveté:
protégé
He had handled the complicated negotiations with Nippon Steel with calmness and intelligence.
consternation
Ellison says of Wohl, “The things that make him good—his analytical ability, his detail orientation, and most of all his caution before he makes a commitment—make Ron so different from Ray that it was a constant struggle for them to work together. Ray is the type of guy who believes when something needs to be done you do whatever is necessary and make it happen. Ron believes when something needs to be done you analyze it thoroughly so you understand exactly how it can be done—if it can be done at all.
Tensions between the development and distribution organizations in software firms are almost inevitable.
attrition
hilt.
nitpicking
turnkey
byword
unrepentant.
people learned how to game the system and increase their profit bonuses.”13
seams,
If you simply bark out orders, you get malicious obedience—they’ll build exactly what you want and make sure it doesn’t work.
proselytize
expunge
