Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle

by Matthew Symonds

First, we changed our motto from ‘Just say no to systems integration,’ which was stupid, to ‘Just say no to custom code.’

riff

“Count your customer databases. Every year you should have fewer. You’re not done until you get to one. Once you have a single customer database, your company has entered the information age. Technology is important. Applications are important. But chief information officers should focus on delivering better information to the business. That’s what Oracle applications and Oracle technology are good at, managing and delivering information.”

sybaritic

diffident

Y...

wryly.

Functional directors, aka department managers, do a good job of optimizing business processes inside their own functional areas: marketing, sales, service, manufacturing, accounting, HR, and the rest. Functional directors have no authority to optimize processes between and across functional areas. That’s why things break down between marketing and sales, manufacturing and service, manufacturing and sales, etc. Only the CEO is responsible for the business as a whole. If the CEO doesn’t connect the dots, the company will never operate efficiently.

subtext

fastidiousness

snobbery.

knockabout

pent-up

reel off

stoked,

derided

“But the truth is that we’ve had a really crappy year, especially the last two quarters. We share the success, and we share the pain. When things are going well, we pay out huge raises and bonuses. When things aren’t going so well, we don’t give out raises and bonuses because there’s no money for them.

We’re watching every penny we spend so we can preserve our team intact—so you’re all here to fight again this year. We have a long tradition of paying people well at Oracle. You can make it all back and more this year, it just depends on how much you sell.”

juxtaposition

chasm.

incensed

But the conventional ASPs (application service providers) were all wrong. Where the computers were located was irrelevant; what mattered was who provided the skilled labor. “It doesn’t matter where the computer is. As long as it’s running in a standard certified configuration, you can put hardware wherever you want and we’ll run it for you.

indelible

Technology companies that are run by engineers, such as Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle are characterized by a particular kind of intellectual competitiveness that is highly unreceptive to the opinions of outsiders, who they think (usually correctly) are not as smart as they are. As long as they execute flawlessly, it’s not a problem. But when something goes wrong, they can’t expect any slack.

hyperbole,

such a cynical piece of deception,

“Most people are so in love with their own ideas that it confines their thinking—creates boundaries and limits their ability to solve problems. Bill, however, has this Asian-like ability to manage his intellectual vanity and take ideas, regardless of where they come from, and put them to work for Microsoft.6 The terrifying thing about Bill is that he’s smart enough to understand what ideas are good—what’s worth replicating—and he has the discipline and resources to get on with it and make it just a little bit better. That’s very Japanese. That’s very scary. Add that to Bill’s ruthless perseverance and the fact that Microsoft has more money than God, and you get a most formidable foe—the ultimate foe, the perfect enemy. We pick our enemies very carefully. We decided to pick a fight with the biggest, most dangerous bully in the schoolyard. There’s no way to avoid this fight, so let’s start it.”

inviolability

grinning

snobbery.

firing

IBM just confused the subject with the predicate.

Here’s us; here’s them; here’s the proof. You decide.”

vassals.

He says, “A lot of Siebel’s success is due to the fact that IBM recommends Siebel.

costs you $2 million for Siebel and another $20 million for IBM t...

IBM says, ‘We’ve looked at Oracle, we’ve looked at Siebel, and we really think you should buy Siebel.’ IBM is the super...

cornucopia

Netscape was just getting fat before they were served up for lunch.

But if Bill has to choose, he’d rather win the war than win the argument. He doesn’t really care where the ideas come from as long as he’s the one who gets paid for them. The very last time I ever spoke with Bill was in 1999, when he called and invited me to visit Microsoft and debate the future directions of technology with their top technical people. When I declined, he asked me to reconsider, arguing that I would find it interesting “because there are a lot of very smart people at Microsoft.” I told him that was exactly why I didn’t want to go. He had expected me to show up and show off by explaining how clever Oracle’s ideas and plans were. Many of Microsoft’s competitors fell into that intellectual vanity trap. Not us. We want to get paid for our ideas.

laissez-faire

intimidation

primate

ambivalent

gestalt

wherefores

But one of the criticisms that I sometimes hear about Catz both within Oracle and outside is that, unlike other managers, she is not really accountable—an impression that’s strengthened by her reluctance to become a public face in the way that Ray Lane and, to a lesser extent, Gary Bloom did.

snaps.

Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m wrong. I was right about relational database technology. I was wrong about the network computer. I was right about Internet architecture replacing client/server architecture. You don’t have to be right all the time to make a good living. When I was wrong, I was not lying, I was just wrong.

Once I enter a crusade, I cease being objective and I become a zealot.”