Resume of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison

Introduction to Larry Ellison

Born: 1944 Birthplace: United States

Oracle Position: CEO

Graduation School: Graduated from the University of Chicago (University of Illinois, Northwestern University)

"Goed to three universities and didn't get a degree"

Ellison immigrated from Russia He is of American Jewish descent and was born in Manhattan in 1944. Ellison was raised by his uncle's family and grew up in the lower-middle class of Chicago's Jewish ghetto. At that time, the gap between rich and poor was not as great as it is now. When he was a student, Ellison did not show excellent qualities and achievements. He was somewhat withdrawn at school and liked to be alone.

Ellison graduated from high school in 1962 and entered the University of Illinois, leaving school in his sophomore year. Later, "Business Week" reported the reason for his departure, saying that it was because of a failing grade point average. Ellison refused to comment. After a summer he entered the University of Chicago and also studied at Northwestern University. After going to three universities, Ellison did not get any college diploma.

In 1966, Ellison left his hometown and came to Berkeley, California, to prepare for graduate school and start working at the same time. He learned computer programming, primarily developing mainframe computers for IBM. He didn't want to join high technology, he just wanted to make some living expenses. He developed applications for some large companies. Software development at that time meant: hanging tapes and backing up data. The work was monotonous and not challenging. It was far from comparable to today's programmers.

About degrees Ellison believes: "College degrees are useful, and I think everyone should get one or more, but unfortunately I didn't get a degree in college. I never went to A computer class, although I still became a programmer, I learned programming completely from books."

"I changed to more than a dozen companies, but still achieved nothing."

In a few years. Ellison changed many companies one after another. In 1973, Ellison worked at Amdal Corporation. Amdal Corporation was a company that produced large computers that competed with IBM. 45% of the shares were owned by Japan's Fujitsu, so Ellison Mori had the opportunity to go to Japan on a business trip. In Japan, he was fascinated by the typical exotic atmosphere of Kyoto. Japanese Zen and culture had a profound impact on Ellison. From then on, he became a lifelong lover of Japanese culture and art.

After leaving Amdahl Corporation, Ellison joined Ampex, a Silicon Valley company that produces imaging equipment, where he met two of the most important people in his life: Bob Miner and Edward Oates . The two of them were working together on how to effectively store and read massive amounts of digital information, and Ellison turned to marketing. Their project ultimately failed, which Ellison attributed to the company's poor management. "I know technology better than the company's bosses, and I know the market better than them. If they can run the company, so can I." That's it. He had the idea of ??starting his own company.

Founding Oracle

Just when they were planning to set up a company, two other legendary companies were born, one was Apple and the other was Microsoft. Although the products, concepts, and cultures of these three companies are completely different, they have the same model: the founders are all composed of a technical entrepreneur with a dream spirit and a technical genius: Bill Gates has Paul Allen, Steve · Steve Jobs had Steve Wozniak, Larry Ellison had Bob Miner.

In June 1977, Ellison and his three partners invested US$2,000 to establish a software development research company, with Ellison owning 60% of the shares. The reason why Ellison held so many shares was that the company was entirely instigated by Ellison, and he had a $400,000 project contract at the time. This year he is 32 years old.

"When I founded Oracle, I wanted to create a work environment that I loved. That was the main purpose. Of course, I also had to support my family through the company, but I didn't expect to be as wealthy as I am now. . Money is not the most important thing, I really want to work with people I like or admire. There is a rule in Oracle recruitment: If you don't like having lunch with this person three times a week, don't let him join.

”

“Tens of billions of dollars in mistakes” In 1976, IBM researchers published a landmark paper "R System: Database Relational Theory", introducing relational database theory and the query language SQL. Leeson read this article very carefully and was deeply shocked by it. This is the first time that someone has used a comprehensive and consistent solution to manage data information. The author Ted Codd published the relational database theory ten years ago and studied it at IBM. The organization develops a prototype. This project is the R system, and the language for accessing data tables is SQL. The article describes in detail his ten years of research results and how to implement them. After reading it, Ellison was keenly aware of the fundamentals of this research. Commercial software systems can be developed on the Internet.

At that time, most people believed that relational databases would not have commercial value because they were too slow to handle large-scale data or a large number of users accessing data. It was beautiful and easy to use, but the disadvantage was that it was too simple and too slow to implement. Ellison saw their opportunity: they decided to develop a general-purpose commercial database system named Oracle, which was named after they had done it for the CIA. A project. However, they are not the only ones taking action. The University of Berkeley has also begun to develop the relational database system Ingres.

Why did "Big Blue" give up on this project worth tens of billions? There are many reasons for this: most of IBM’s researchers are from academic backgrounds, and they are most interested in theory rather than products to be marketed; from an academic point of view, research results should be made public, because publishing papers and speeches can enable them to Why not become famous? Another important reason is that IBM had a hierarchical database product IMS that was selling well at the time. The launch of a competitive product would affect the work of IMS sales staff. Released the relational database DB2, and Ellison had become a multimillionaire by then.

Ellison once compared IBM's choice of Microsoft's MS-DOS as the operating system of the IBM-PC to "the world." "The most serious mistake in the history of business operations, with a loss of more than hundreds of billions of dollars in value." IBM's mistake of publishing a paper on the R system but not launching a relational database product soon may be second only. Oracle's market value reached 280 in 1996 Billion dollars.

"Smart marketing strategy"

A few months later, they developed Oracle 1.0, but it was just a toy and could not do more than complete simple relational queries. Anything. It took a long time for them to make Oracle useful, and they kept the company afloat by taking on database management projects and doing consulting work.

The first two users of Oracle's database were the CIA. and the Naval Intelligence Agency, they use completely different hardware and software. The CIA uses IBM mainframes, the Navy uses VAX machines, and Ellison and Miner use Digital PDP machines to develop Oracle. This forced them to make an important decision: the new version 3.0 was developed entirely in C language, because C language is supported by all machines and C compilers are cheap.

Ellison claims to customers that Oracle can run on all machines. In fact, it is of course impossible, but this is a very smart marketing strategy. Large companies and institutions have various types of computers and operating systems, and they are willing to buy a universal database.

In addition to IBM's friendly help, Oracle's success must also be attributed to Digital. IBM provided Ellison with relational database theory, and DEC provided the stage for performance: the VAX computer. VAX is the most successful minicomputer in history.

"Excellent marketer"

Early versions of Oracle did not work properly, the program was full of bugs, and users complained constantly, but Ellison was convinced to capture a large market share early is the most important thing. "When the market has been established, do you know how much it will cost Pepsi-Cola to capture 1% of Coca-Cola's market? It is very, very expensive." IBM's style is quite different. If users are not satisfied, it will not launch new products.

Oracle was not considered a basically reliable operating system until version 5.0 in 1986. But what is interesting is that early users did not care about losing money and data. Even the CIA was not unhappy. What they needed was the development of technology. , not just a product. Ellison described for them the wonderful features that the product would be able to achieve, and although it was not achieved yet, they were willing to pay for it.

Ellison's job is not just to sell products, he also promotes the concept of relational databases everywhere. The standard title of the speech he often gives is "Defects of Relational Data Technology", describing the problems that occur in relational databases, and then introducing how Oracle solves these problems. Another one of his unique sales skills is: while others just talk about the product functions, he gives a demonstration on the spot, enters a relational query on the computer, and the results come out soon. Although the actual application situation may be different, The audience was deeply impressed. Ellison is not only giving a demonstration, but also training users to use the relational query language SQL. Ellison's success was less as a technology guru than as a marketing guru.

“Oracle was born at the right time. Ellison put the market first and everything else second. Companies with average technology and first-class market capabilities always beat companies with first-class technology and only A company with ordinary market capabilities," a Silicon Valley veteran commented.

"You're all going to be millionaires, I'm sure of it!"

Ellison often told his employees that they would all become millionaires if they adopted his marketing strategies. In fact, early employees largely achieved this goal. His strategy was to sell the product by emphasizing Oracle's three major attributes: portability, compatibility with other database products, especially IBM, and support for broad network connectivity. This satisfies the user's needs, although they actually get less than they expected. Ellison's opponents attack him for always selling bubble software. Bubble software refers to software products whose functions have not yet been completed.

Ellison's main opponent is Ingres. In 1984, Oracle's sales were US$12.7 million and Ingres's were US$9 million; in 1985, both sales more than doubled, but Ingres grew faster. If this develops, Ingres will surpass its opponents, but at this time Big Blue IBM helps Ellison again.

In 1985, IBM released the relational database DB2, which used SQL, a different data query language from Ingres. Ingres used QUEL. Ellison seized the market opportunity and promoted the compatibility of Oracle and IBM everywhere. As a result, from 1985 to 1990, although Ingres's sales increased by more than 50% every year, Oracle was ahead, with an annual growth rate of more than 100%. . SQL became the official industry standard in 1986. The boss of Ingres couldn't believe Ellison's luck, but this was Ellison's shrewdness, "Follow Big Blue, you will never go wrong."

IBM's establishment of SQL standards is the key to Oracle's success, but the database war is far from over. Sybase and Informix have also joined the competition.

"My goal is to defeat the enemy"

One mistake Ingres made was to develop the PC version very late, and Ellison, like Bill Gates, saw the potential of the PC. Huge potential. Oracle soon had a cheap version for PCs, and although it was almost useless, Ellison and his sales staff had a powerful propaganda weapon: Oracle could run on PCs.

Ellison heard that Ingres had invented a new technology—distributed query. Ten days later, Oracle published an advertisement announcing SQL Star: the first distributed query database. In fact, there was no such technology yet. any such product. That's what Ellison is like, imagining what the product should be and then making it happen. If successful, he is a prophet of success.

Oracle's listing brought Ellison a net worth of US$93 million, and Microsoft also went public the next day. Microsoft and Oracle were founded in the same year, and Bill Gates' stock was worth more than $300 million. Ellison discovered the most powerful opponent in his life.

In 1988, Oracle launched version 6.0, which was the most powerful product at the time. However, its rush to the market was a disaster for the company. The initial users of 6.0 experienced frequent crashes and database failures. Destroyed, product quality was basically stable until version 6.0.27. The mantissa 27 indicates that version 6.0 has undergone 27 major revisions.

In this case, why don’t users choose other products? The main reason is: if users choose products from other manufacturers, they will have to rewrite all applications, which is a huge workload, so once you choose a certain database platform for development, you have to rely on it.

"Encountering a crisis"

From its founding in 1977 to 1990, Oracle's sales maintained an annual growth rate of more than 100%. High growth also lurks huge hidden dangers: the company's financial and sales management is very chaotic. In order to complete tasks, sales staff receive commissions and sign a large number of contracts that cannot be collected. Some people even commit fraud, and no one cares about the execution of contracts, and cash flow. is a negative value. Ellison hired experienced managers with high salaries and began to reorganize the company. In the third fiscal quarter of 1990, a sales contract of US$15 million could not be executed. As a result, although quarterly sales reached a record US$236 million, profits only increased by 1. %.

The day after the news was announced, Oracle's stock fell from US$25.38 to US$17.5, losing 30% of its market value. In order to survive the crisis, Oracle laid off 10% of its employees. The situation became worse in the next two quarters. The stock closed at the end of October at only $5.38. In the spring, Ellison owned shares worth nearly $1 billion. There will be only $160 million left in November.

Ellison bravely accepted the challenge without selling his stock. The company begins to improve sales and financial management to maintain sufficient cash flow, and sales contracts must be confirmed. These common-company practices helped a lot, but the company's growth rate slowed, which was the real reason Ellison was reluctant to adopt them. In 1991 and 1992, the company's sales growth rate was only 12% and 15%.

Ellison pinned his hopes on Oracle 7.0, a new version the company had been talking about for several years before it finally debuted in June 1992. This time he learned the lesson of rushing 6.0 to the market and released the Alpha test version 10 months ago. Oracle 7.0 is an excellent product and has achieved great success. Ellison's sales force had a real trump card, and sales increased from $1.5 billion in 1992 to $4.2 billion in 1995.

The company has also begun to develop mature management methods, patiently listening to users’ opinions and meeting their needs. Oracle has never done this before. It turns out that Oracle treats customers very casually. A customer called to complain that Oracle's database crashed and destroyed his data. The technical support engineer's answer was: "It's no use at all." This situation is now Never again, customers must receive top notch service.

"The network computer that changed the world"

Ellison is no longer responsible for day-to-day work and is just planning Oracle's future development direction. In his spare time, he sailed the 78-foot-long "Shayana Na" for sailing. In 1995, he won the Sydney Sailing Race Championship.

The information superhighway caught the attention of Ellison, one of President Clinton's biggest sponsors. He once vigorously promoted the development of interactive TV and set-top boxes, and soon he discovered a more fascinating opportunity: WWW. Netscape's browser promoted the WWW to the world. The performance of PCs will no longer be the protagonist. , being connected to the Internet is where the value lies.

Ellison introduced the concept of Network Computer at the European Information Technology Forum meeting in Paris in 1995. The so-called NC refers to a low-cost computer with simple configuration but can make full use of network resources. It does not require constantly updated hardware equipment and increasingly complex and huge operating systems. There are no floppy disks and hard disks. Just turn on the power and use a browser to connect to the Internet. , you can obtain information and store files, and the price will be no more than $500.

This time Ellison set his sights on the software empire Microsoft, "Oracle will only do one thing, we manage massive amounts of data and provide this data through the network."

Network computers Behind it is a powerful network server. All data and applications are stored in the server's database. Oracle's database technology will make network computers very easy to operate and manage. Gates followed Ellison, arguing that network computers had no value and were just replicas of mainframe sub-terminals. But the victory was Ellison's on that day, and network computer coverage appeared on the main pages of every newspaper.

“Japanese culture is very interesting and has a great influence on me. The Japanese are the most aggressive people in the world and at the same time the most polite. They are a mixture of extreme arrogance and extreme humility, a wonderful mixture. Balance. When we founded Oracle, we wanted to create as much of this culture in the company as possible, where you're both aggressive and humble, and if you can balance those two things, your chances of succeeding in the competition are greatly increased. , both individually and collectively."

Networked computers have received mixed reviews from the media. CNET's reporter believes that network computers without hard drives need to rely on servers, which will be completely unreliable; "Business Weekly" columnist believes that network computers will bring about a completely different personal computer industry. Microsoft's vice president of technology believes: "People want computers to provide more capabilities, not less, and network computers are not worth mentioning at all." However, large companies and institutions greatly appreciate network computers, and every two years The cost of updating computers and upgrading software is too high. In 1996, the cost of a standard PC was US$2,000, but the cost of maintenance was close to US$13,200 per unit. The management cost of network computers should be much lower.

Although Oracle brought together IBM, Sun, Apple and Netscape to formulate network computer standards in 1996, in fact no network computer was produced. Although Gates scorned network computers, he also published a standard for simple personal computers, SIPC, to fight back. SIPC is basically the same as NC, with one difference: it requires a Windows operating system.

But none of this matters. With the competition between AMD and Intel, computers under $800 became a new growth point in the computer industry in 1997, and Basic Computers under $500 will soon appear. Microsoft still dominates the market, but Ellison never gives up. He said: "The war of ideas is over, and the market competition has just begun."