Larry Ellison: Founding Oracle, Decision Making and Taking Risks

Описание

9 Books Larry Ellison Thinks You Should Read:

https://www.investorsarchive.com/book-recommendations/larry-ellison



When Larry Ellison first expressed the goals for his comany, more than a few people thought his ambition laughable. Oracle led the software pack in relational database technology, but many observers saw this as a mere niche market in the industry, while mighty Microsoft provided the operating systems and office software in the coveted personal computer sector.

Larry Ellison and his partners won a two-year contract to build a relational database management system (RDBMS) for the CIA. The project’s code name: Oracle. They finished the project a year ahead of schedule and used the extra time to develop their system for commercial applications. They named their commercial RDBMS Oracle as well. In 1980, Ellison’s company had only eight employees, and revenues were less than $1 million, but the following year, IBM itself adopted Oracle for its mainframe systems, and Oracle’s sales doubled every year for the next seven years. The million-dollar company was becoming a billion-dollar company. Ellison renamed the company Oracle Corporation, for its bestselling product.

Beginning in 2004, Ellison set out to increase Oracle’s market share through a series of strategic acquisitions. Oracle spent more than $25 billion in only three years to buy a flock of companies and large and small makers of software for managing data, identity, retail inventory and logistics. The first major acquisition was PeopleSoft, purchased at the end of 2004 for $10.3 billion. No sooner was the ink dry on the PeopleSoft deal than Ellison trumped rival SAP to acquire retail software developer Retek. Within the following year, Oracle also acquired competitor Siebel Systems. Ellison capped this buying spree with the acquisition of business intelligence software provider Hyperion Solutions in 2007. Two years later, in the depths of a global recession, Ellison once again acted boldly, acquiring computer hardware and software manufacturer Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion. Oracle became the world’s largest business software company, supplying all 100 of of the Fortune Global 100.

In May of 2016, it was announced that Lawrence Ellison would donate $200 million to the University of Southern California to create a new cancer research center in West Los Angeles. The gift matched the largest single donation ever received by the university. The Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine will deploy experts in physics, biology, math and engineering in a coordinated effort to prevent, detect and treat cancer. In 2017, Ellison’s personal fortune was estimated at $55 billion, which made him one of the five wealthiest living Americans. His fortune continues to grow and as of 2018 he was ranked as the eighth wealthiest individual in the world.