Thoughts on Matthew
Symonds "Softwar"
One of the books I've been
reading whilst on holiday is
"Softwar : An Intimate
Portrait of Larry Ellison
and Oracle" by Matthew
Symonds. I'm not usually one
for biographies of Larry
Ellison, but Amazon were
offering it for 1 penny (I'm
not joking, it was probably
a pricing error) and I
thought it'd be worth a
look. Interestingly, Larry
Ellison annotated some of
the pages, with his take on
some of the events, which
was interesting as it gave a
counterpoint to some of the
more 'colourful' episodes.
I won't go into the full
details of the book, except
to say that off all the
'histories of Oracle' i've
seen, it's the best read so
far and gives some excellent
background info to the
events of the last couple of
decades. Some of the bits I
found particularly
interesting were;
-
the
effect that Sybase had
on Oracle. Sybase came
on to the scene around
the time of Oracle 5.1,
and was the first RDBMS
to feature stored
procedures, referential
integrity, and two-phase
commits. These features
were yet to be found in
Oracle, and their
introduction lead to a
complete rewrite of the
Oracle server, which
eventually lead to
Oracle 6. Version 6 had
all of Sybase's features
and more (in particular,
clustering) but the
general 'buggyness' of
version 6, almost
brought the company to
it's knees back in 1991.
Version 7 (the first
version I ever worked
with) sorted out these
problems, and gave
Oracle the technology
lead that it's had to
this day. However, it's
interesting to note the
role Sybase had in it's
day, and that stored
procedures came from
sybase, and not Oracle.
-
The role
that Geoff Squires, and
CACI, had in the early
history of Oracle. I've
worked with CACI in the
past (for their ACORN
demographic
classification system)
and they mentioned at
the time that CACI were
the first distributor
outside of the USA for
Oracle Software. Geoff
Squires, from CACI,
eventually joined Oracle
and ended up running the
operational side of
Oracle for the USA as a
whole. Larry Ellison is
quotes as saying that
the worst decision he's
ever made was sacking
Geoff Squires, who now
works with Gary Bloom at
Veritas.
-
The part
played by other
personalities such as
Ray Lane, Gary Kennedy,
Jeff Henley, Safra Catz,
Chuck Phillips, Tom
Siebel, Craig Conway and
Ron Wohl. The fall from
grace for Ray Lane is
particularly
interesting,
particularly in the
light of
recent organisational
changes where Safra
Catz and Chuck Phillips
are now Co-Presidents at
Oracle, and Jeff Henley
is now the Chairman.
-
The
degree to which Oracle's
sales culture has
changed over the years.
Together with Oracle 6i,
Oracle's sales
techniques almost took
the company under in
1990-91, where licenses
were being booked, at
huge discounts, on the
basis that customers
bought technology that
they might need in the
future. Huge deals were
signed, initially
bumping up the sales
figures but leading to
drastic falls in orders
in subsequent years, and
it was the introduction
of Ray Lane at the start
of the 90's that started
to change this culture.
Oracle have always had a
reputation of
'aggressive' sales
techniques, but it does
seem as if they're now
trying to build
relationships for the
long term, and approach
that was originally
pioneered in the UK and
Europe.
-
The
significance of the
e-Business Suite to
Oracle's success.
Version 11i of Oracle
Applications was the
first 'integrated'
version of Oracle's
applications, and at the
time competed head-on
with SAP and the 'best
of breed' approach
favoured by systems
integrators such as IBM.
Again, a premature
release of Apps 11i
almost blew it all for
Oracle, but the gamble
paid off for Oracle and
the market has now come
round to the concept of
buying integrated suites
rather than integrating
lots of different
systems. Oracle almost
blew it though
(particularly with the
intial release, and
Larry's war on systems
integrators) but the
'internet architecture',
and the close
integration between the
various modules gave
oracle an architectural
lead that it still has
now.
If you get a chance, and
you're interested in a bit
of Oracle history, buy or
borrow the book and take a
look. I'd thoroughly
recommend it.
