|
|
| Birth Name(s) : Larry Ellison |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
|
Partner:
|
| Profession:
Musician |
| << Add Larry Ellison To Your Favorites |
Larry Ellison Special Offers
|
Full Larry Ellison Biography
Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is the co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, a major database software company.
Larry was a bright but inattentive student. He left the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at the end of his second year, after not taking his final exams because his adoptive mother had just died. After spending a summer in Northern California where he lived with his friend Chuck Weiss, he attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he first encountered computer programming. At 20 years of age, he moved to northern California permanently.
Larry Ellison has been married four times. His first three marriages ended in divorce. He was married to Adda Quinn, between 1967 and 1974. He was married to Mary Wheeler between 1977 and 1978. From 1983 to 1986, he was married to Barbara Boothe, with whom he had two children, a son and a daughter.
On 18 December 2003, Ellison married Melanie Craft, a romance novelist and Oberlin grad, at his Woodside estate. His friend, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, was the official photographer.
Ellison was inspired by the paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database systems named "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks." He founded Oracle in 1977, putting up a mere $2000 of his own money, under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL). In 1979, the company was renamed Relational Software Inc., later renamed Oracle after the flagship product Oracle database. He had heard about the IBM System R database, also based on Codd's theories, and wanted Oracle to be compatible with it, but IBM made this impossible by keeping secret System R's error codes. The initial release of Oracle was Oracle 2 – there was no Oracle 1. The release number was intended to imply that all of the bugs had been worked out of an earlier version.
In 1990, Oracle laid off 10% (about 400 people) of its work force because of a mismatch between cash and revenues. This crisis, which almost resulted in Oracle's bankruptcy, came about because of Oracle's "up-front" marketing strategy, in which sales people urged potential customers to buy the largest possible amount of software all at once. The sales people then booked the value of future license sales in the current quarter, thereby increasing their bonuses. This became a problem when the future sales subsequently failed to materialize. Oracle eventually had to restate its earnings twice, and also to settle out of court class action lawsuits arising from its having overstated its earnings. Ellison would later say that Oracle had made "an incredible business mistake."
Although IBM dominated the mainframe relational database market with its DB2 and SQL/DS database products, it delayed entering the market for a relational database on UNIX and Windows operating systems. This left the door open for Sybase, Oracle, and Informix (and eventually Microsoft) to dominate mid-range and microcomputers.
In 1994, Informix Software overtook Sybase and became Oracle's most important rival. The intense war between Informix CEO Phil White and Ellison was front page Silicon Valley news for three years. Ultimately, Oracle defeated Informix in 1997. In the same year, Ellison was made a director of Apple Computer after Steve Jobs came back to the company. Ellison resigned in 2002, saying that he did not have the time to attend necessary formal board meetings. In November of 2005, a book detailing the war between Oracle and Informix was published. "The Real Story of Informix Software and Phil White" provides a detailed chronology of the battle of Informix against Oracle, and how Informix Software's CEO Phil White landed in jail because of his obsession to overtake Ellison.
Once Informix and Sybase were defeated, Oracle enjoyed years of industry dominance until the rise of Microsoft's SQL Server in the late 90s and IBM's acquisition of Informix Software in 2001 to complement their DB2 database. Today Oracle's main competition for new database licenses on UNIX, Linux, and Windows operating systems is with IBM's DB2, the open source database MySQL, and with Microsoft SQL Server (which only runs on Windows). IBM's DB2 still dominates the mainframe database market.
In 2005, Oracle paid Ellison a $975,000 salary, a $6,500,000 bonus, and other compensation of $955,100.
Oracle Racing also participated in the challenger selection series for the 2003 America's Cup but was defeated in the final of the 2003 Louis Vuitton Cup.
Ellison owns the fifth largest yacht in the world named "Rising Sun" which reportedly cost over US$200 million to build. Rising Sun is 452.75ft (138 m) long.
Ellison is a licensed pilot and has owned several unusual aircraft including fighter jets. Ellison has been cited several times by city of San Jose for violating its limits on late night takeoffs and landings from San Jose Mineta International Airport by planes weighing more than 75,000 pounds (34 tonnes). In 2001, San Jose granted him a personal waiver from these regulations.
Ellison has been rebuffed in his attempts to buy the Golden State Warriors and the San Francisco 49ers. He is now pursuing ownership of a potential future NFL franchise in Los Angeles. |
|
Larry Ellison Sponsors
|
| Add Larry Ellison Biography (SuperUSERS) + |
| Add Larry Ellison Review/Comment
|
HQ Larry Ellison Pictures (1) | Random Larry Ellison Picture
|
| << Back to the Larry Ellison Homepage |
|
