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Softwar : An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and
Oracle by Matthew Symonds Rating: •••
(Recommended) |
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title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Intense Readers
enjoy a triple treat in Matthew Symonds’ new book, Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle.
First, Symonds writes well and presents a
well-paced presentation of both Ellison and Oracle. Second, Symonds was given great access by Ellison, and he used it
well to present a wide range of points of view, without making this an
“authorized” biography with all the pandering and whitewashing that can
represent. Third, Ellison comments on what Symonds
has to say in hundreds of footnotes throughout the book. The style of the
comments, including some misspellings made me believe that Ellison wrote
these notes himself as quick e-mail missives. They provide as much
enlightenment about the central figure as does the narrative. Here’s an
excerpt from the end of Chapter 16, “Chained to the Job,” (pp. 294-301): What's very clear is how much these days
Ellison leans on the slight, black-haired, black-clad figure of Safra Catz. He says, "She
makes up for one of my biggest areas of weakness. She's disciplined and
thorough. I'm not. I'm pretty good at separating the good ideas from the bad
ideas, and I'm pretty good at drilling into detail and solving problems. But
once a problem is understood, once a plan is in place, I usually move on to
the next thing rather than following up and making sure that the agreed-upon
plan is actually implemented. It's called execution, and Safra
is brilliant at it. Safra is so exceptionally
bright that she keeps all the whys and wherefores of all our policies and
plans in her head. That enables her to make interpretations, modifications,
and improvements during the execution phase of the plans without any
intervention from me. Now when we decide on something, it actually gets
done." Catz has always downplayed the extent of
her power and influence, insisting that she has no agenda of her own (unlike,
by implication, It's an impressive (and genuine) demonstration of loyalty
as well as being clever—it puts her out of the firing line when she's doing
something that ruffles feathers or bruises the egos of senior executives,
especially on the sales side, who resent the degree of oversight and
supervision she represents. 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. Ellison says, "She's
accountable to me—and to the board. Together with Jeff Henley, we're
collectively accountable for the performance of the company. If we're not
doing a good job, it will show up in the numbers. I understand her desire to
stay in the background, but that's going to be ver~
hard to do over the long term. She's gradually becoming more visible. Joining
the board of directors was a big step in that direction." Given that Ellison
had sometimes referred to Catz as a possible
successor, how did he want her role to evolve over the next few years?
"I'm not sure it needs to evolve much. We work extremely well together.
Sometimes we're too aggressive about pushing new systems and procedures into
the company, but we keep on improving our margins, so it must be working.
We're trying to define how a modern business operates. We're continuously
improving Oracle and our applications software suite at the same time." From Ellison's point of view, Safra
Catz is the answer to his prayers. She makes him
much more effective within Oracle than he could be without her, he can trust
her completely, and he can communicate what he wants through her almost
intuitively. But I think there are potential dangers in the relationship for
both of them. Ellison must be careful not to do what he did in the past with
favorite subordinates, which is to load more and more responsibility on them
until something snaps. In Catz's case, there's
little chance that it will go to her head, as happened with She's also smart enough to know when she doesn't know
something. But there is a risk of Ellison's trying to turn her into something
that she's not. Some people feel more comfortable and are more effective
working behind the scenes. If Catz doesn't want the
limelight, Ellison shouldn't push her into it. He must also guard against
making her the main channel through which he deals with other senior
executives. Amazingly, Catz hasn't yet become an
object of envy and mistrust in spite of her unique degree of access to
Ellison, because people don't see her manipulating the situation to her own
advantage. But she's nonetheless highly vulnerable to the backbiting and
jealousy that exist in all organizations. She says, "People have been
really nice to me. A number of folks appreciate that decisions can be made
faster because I've done my homework. But you never really know what they
think." One of the
most frequent criticisms of Ellison is that even in an industry that lives on
hype, he takes boasting and overpromising
to new levels. It's not only Tom Siebel who talks about "the lies of
Larry Ellison," it's an article of faith for half the journalists who
cover the software business that Ellison is an incorrigible liar who
deliberately distorts the truth about both his professional and personal
life. I frequently observed him stretching the truth to create a better
impression, while his ebullient optimism routinely put him in the
embarrassing situation of having to explain why something he had seemed
certain of hadn't happened. Ellison
says, "I piss people off because I'm quite willing to say what I think
and I'm reckless enough to make public my predictions about the future—about
Oracle and about the industry. As an old Chinese proverb says, 'Predictions
are very dangerous, especially when they pertain to the future.' 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. When I say Oracle clusters can run real applications
and DB2 clusters can't, some people think I'm lying. I'm not. It's a fact.
When I say Oracle Java is faster than BEA Java, some people think I am lying.
I'm not. It's a fact. When I predict one of our products is going to come out
on a certain date and it doesn't, some people think I lied. I didn't. I was
just wrong. Give me a specific example of a lie I've told in business.
There's only one. In my early twenties, when I first came to I suggest that maybe Ellison had done as much as anybody
in the software industry to establish those rules of engagement and had both liyed and thrived by them. He grins as if to say that's
all in the past. "Since I've got this notorious reputation for
exaggeration, the press denies Oracle any leeway to exaggerate at all. I know
that, so we make sure that all our advertising is one hundred percent
fact-based and provable. Our current campaign is called 'Just the Facts.'
We're absolutely rigorous about making claims about our products. Any claim
we make must be independently verifiable and provable. I believe in ads that
list the cold, hard facts about your products and your competitors'
products—a side-by-side comparison of irrefutable facts. "Unfortunately,
just sticking to the facts doesn't necessarily mean you'll avoid criticism.
When I said that GE Power runs the Oracle E-Business Suite, a front-page
article in The Wall Street Journal took me to task for being
intentionally misleading. They thought that I should have listed the names of
the specific GE Power locations that were currently running the suite and
identify exactly which parts of the suite each location was running. Give me
a break. I never said that GE Power runs the E-Business Suite everywhere for everything.
I never said that GE Power has no other software except Oracle software. I
said that GE Power runs the E-Business Suite. Period. I suppose I could say
that GE Power runs lots of parts of the E-Business Suite at lots of
locations. That's true too, and it's a bit more specific, but it sounds
strange. So I'll just keep saying that GE Power runs the E-business Suite and
leave it at that. That may not be precise for some, but it's the truth." What about Ellison's
claim when the E-Business Suite came out that it was complete, wasn't that an
example of deliberate overclaiming that came close
to lying? Ellison laughs. "Well, words like 'complete' and 'unbreakable'
are relative, not absolute. Our E-Business Suite is much more complete than
any other suite of applications. In the high-tech manufacturing industry the
E-Business Suite is close enough to being complete to be called complete. In
the insurance industry it's less complete. Our database is so much more
reliable and secure than any other database system that it's okay for us to
call it unbreakable. Tandem [the fault-tolerant computer company] called
their computers 'nonstop' because they stopped much less frequently than
other computers, not because Tandem computers never, ever stopped. I read
that some analysts say that our claim that the 9i database is unbreakable is
outrageous because everyone knows that nothing is truly unbreakable. Fine. If
the earth falls into the sun, our database will break—that's true, so I'm a
liar. Whatever." Ellison does, however, accept that he can sometimes
push an argument or an idea just that little bit further than it can stand.
"Once I believe in a new, important idea I get very enthusiastic and
push it hard. Once I started believing in Internet architecture, I couldn't
say anything nice about client/server. Once I started believing in integrated
applications suites, I had a hard time admitting that there was any value at
all in any best-of-breed product. Once I've thought something through,
there's no intellectual uncertainty remaining. Once I enter a crusade, I
cease being objective and I become a zealot." Another aspect of Ellison's bravura style is equally
calculated: leadership. "You cannot lead if you're filled with
uncertainty. Imagine two officers each leading a company of marines up a
hill. The first one says, 'Men, we're going up this hill and we're going to
kill every fucking enemy solder on our way to the top. I'm going first, and
you're all going to make it to the top with me. I haven't lost one of you yet.
Follow me, men.' Cool, competent, and confident. I'm ready to follow that
guy. The second guy says, 'Men, we're going to try to take this hill. I have
to admit that I don't know how many enemy solders are on this hill. And I've
never really done anything like this before. But I'm willing to go first if
you're willing to follow me. We might make it; we might not. There's no way
to know for certain. Even if we make it to the top, it's highly likely that
some of us will be killed. Follow me, men.' Well, the second guy is
impressively honest about his fears and uncertainties. Maybe he should become
a psychotherapist. But there's no way anyone is following that guy anywhere.
" Like a lot
of people, I still find it hard to understand how someone with as many choices
as Ellison, who for most of the last fifteen years has had more money than he
could spend and who clearly has a low boredom threshold, can bring himself to
keep on doing the same thing. He says, "My sister told me that whenever
I got too close to a goal I'd raise the bar for fear of actually clearing it.
We're endlessly curious about our own limits. The process of self-discovery
is one of testing and retesting yourself. I won the Did Ellison
still love his job when Oracle came close to self-destruction in 1991? He
says simply, "It's not like I had a choice then. I had to save Oracle to
save myself." What if he had been forced out? What if Don Lucas had
denied him that chance? "I'd have done what Steve [Jobs] did [after
being booted out of Apple]: I'd have started another company to try and prove
it all over again, first and foremost to myself." So he would have put
at risk his entire fortune, at that stage around $150 million? "Without
question. Oh, yes! It was my life that was at risk, not my money. It has
nothing to do with courage; I just can't accept defeat until I've been
carried dead from the field. I'm one of those chess players who will stare at
the board for as long as it takes to find a winning line of play. I have a
lot of endurance: intellectual, emotional, physical. The clock in the
software game is measured in years, not minutes. It took twelve years to make
our bloody database-clustering technology work. But we knew if we could make
it work we'd win. If we can make the E-Business Suite work, and I think we
can, we'll win again. I'm optimistic, but not irrationally so. We're pretty
good at coming up with winning strategies; the problem is, our strategies are
technically very) very hard to implement. But difficult strategies, well
executed, can lead to great victories. If the prospect of beating IBM or Microsoft is one of the
things that gets Ellison up in the morning, there
are other satisfactions. One is the straightforward pleasure that comes from
solving a problem or making a piece of technology work. "Watching a
cluster of eight Compaq PCs running faster and more reliably than a big-ass
IBM mainframe is just so incredibly cool. It's the same kind of thrill as
when the Wright boys took off on What Ellison
hasn't said is that he gets satisfaction from making the businesses of
Oracle's customers run better. It's the kind of thing that politically
correct CEOs are supposed to say. "GE is a wonderful company, but it's
not my company, it's not the team I play on. I'm happy if General Electric is
happy with our software because that means our software's good and we'll
probably sell a lot of it. We work very hard to make our customers
successful, because that's how we make Oracle successful. When the Lakers win
a basketball championship, they may say they did it for the fans, but I don't
really believe them. I think they did it for themselves. As a fan that
doesn't bother me at all. I'm just glad they won. "I get
a lot of satisfaction from my job. There's the intellectual satisfaction that
comes from solving a really hard problem. There's the satisfaction of seeing
our software help our customers, especially in health care and government,
where good information can actually save lives. But it's not altruism, and
it's certainly not the money. Maybe it's just vanity that motivates me. You
can never really be certain of anyone's motives, including your own. You are
better off measuring people by "what they do rather than the unknowable
'why?' I don't know why the Lakers played well, I'm just glad they did. I
don't know, can't know, and don't care what motivated Jonas Salk to try to
make a polio vaccine. I'm just glad he did. If you want to understand why
people do things, then take a course in evolutionary psychology. What we want
to do with our lives is the most important question we all have to answer. So
if I could do anything at all with my life, what would I do? I'd cure cancer.
[LE writes: Yes, I know that cancer
is a collection of diseases and it
is very unlikely that there will ever
be a single cure. Still, my mother
died of cancer and I want to cure cancer. That’s
where most of my money and all of my time after Oracle are likely to go.]
I'd much rather cure cancer than become the richest guy in the world.
Why? Because I'd be a much happier person if I cured cancer. Why? Because I'd
be loved. Why? Because people don't want to suffer painful death. Why? You
know why." Although Ellison talks about a life after Oracle in which,
among other things, he would spend time working on his new passion, molecular
biology, the level of success that he says that Oracle must achieve before he
can leave is so daunting that he may never be able to escape. "I'm stuck
here for the duration; there's no way I can stop until I know how this story
ends. I think even if I found out I was dying and I had a year to live, I
wouldn't change my life very much." If you’ve
been curious about Ellison, reading Softwar is one good way to satisfy your interests. Steve
Hopkins, January 22, 2004 |
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ã 2004 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the February 2004
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Softwar.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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