Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle

To call Lawrence J Ellison 'driven' is a bit of an understatement. As the founder, chairman, and CEO of the world's leading supplier of database software and enterprise information technology, Ellison has fashioned an organization that now generates more than $9.7 billion in annual revenue. His company, Oracle (Redwood Shores, CA), is the second-largest independent software company on earth.

Oracle's business model focuses on network computing in general, and the Internet in particular. 'If the Internet turns out not to be the future of computing, we're toast,' Ellison has said. 'But if it is, we're golden.' Banking on the latter, Oracle has generated and launched a 100-percent Internet-enabled product line of enterprise programs encompassing database software, decision-support systems, server products, business applications, and application-development tools. In the high-tech, interactive marketplace, Ellison has positioned his company for 'winner-take-all' dominance.

Born on the South Side of Chicago in 1944, Ellison studied math and science at the University of Chicago, but dropped out and headed to California. A self-taught programmer, Ellison eventually found himself working at Amdahl--a company in which Fujitsu held a 45-percent ownership stake. A business trip to Japan introduced Ellison to many distinct differences between eastern and western culture, which continue to influence his leadership philosophy.

East meets west

Ellison tempers an eastern focus on group cooperation with a western celebration of competitive individualism. And although he asserts that Oracle is indeed a Western company that is dominated by Americans, he stresses that the company's goals are so ambitious that they cannot be accomplished by individuals, but instead must be undertaken through collective effort.

Oracle can trace its roots back to ideas contained in a paper published by IBM Research in November 1976. Entitled 'The System R Project,' the paper offered a mathematically consistent way of managing and retrieving information through a relational database. IBM's prototype, although fully functional, was too slow for commercial use. Ellison believed that he and the original Oracle team could beat IBM to market with a viable product.

With $2000 of seed money (and $200,000 in personal savings to keep the four founders fed and sheltered) the company that would ultimately be known as Oracle took two years to create a product and make its first sale. The Advanced Technology Division of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base became the first customer, and Ellison himself did the software installation and taught the training course.

From that starting point, Oracle has consistently enjoyed double- and even triple-digit growth. As Ellison quotes the take-no-prisoners, grant-no-quarter leadership dogma of such historic luminaries as Genghis Khan and La Rochefoucauld, it becomes clear that for him, mere profitability isn't sufficient--total market domination is the only acceptable outcome.

To reach that goal, Ellison has consistently sought to embrace pioneering technologies. In 1988, he accepted the challenge of adapting the Oracle database for a massively parallel computing system, the M-cubed machine. From that basis has sprung the Oracle media server, a database system that manages high-fidelity audio and high-resolution video streams to drive such commercial opportunities as video-on-demand.

From its modest origins in 1977, Oracle now employs 43,000 people worldwide and 21,000 in the United States. But, as one past employee notes, 'Larry Ellison makes Machievelli look like Saint Francis. However, like Ghengis Khan, you have to admire his accomplishments.' Ellison has been alternately described in the press as a marketing genius and an egocentric strongman. Extreme characterizations seem to abound when Ellison is the topic. In fact, the punch line to the title of his authorized biography, The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison, is noted on the book cover: 'God knows he isn't Larry Ellison.'

Despite his brash image, Ellison has instilled compassion and philanthropy
in his company. Recognizing a responsibility to make a difference in the global community, Oracle three years ago introduced Promise, a $100 million program to provide network computers to economically strapped, disenfranchised public schools. Thus far, 139 schools have received a total of 6630 computers.

Ellison's altruism is sincere and targeted. He notes that improved educational technology enhances youngsters' capacity for learning. Computer-based learning offers the individualized attention that US public schools cannot otherwise provide. Such personal training generates intellectual opportunities that will enable disadvantaged children to learn and compete in an increasingly complex world.

However, it's important to note that the donated computers aren't PCs running the operating system and software marketed by Oracle's archrival Microsoft. Instead, they're network computers using the Web-enabled enterprise programs to which Oracle is so completely committed. So, is it generosity or indoctrination? With Ellison drafting the strategy, it's probably a liberal allotment of each.