Larry Ellison Success Story

Early Career

He joined the University of Chicago where he came across computer design as a really interesting subject. In the year 1966, he moved to California. He was 22 at that time. In the 1970’s Ellison worked for Ampex Corporation. He had the opportunity to work on  a project for the CIA which included creating databases for their systems. Ellison was inspired by the paper written by Edgar F.Codd on relational database systems. This paper was called, ‘A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks’.

Career

In the year 1977 he approached two partners for starting a company. They named it Software Development Labarotaries (SDL). The three of them started with an investment of $2000. In 1979 they renamed the company ‘Relational Software Inc.’ Slowly they were working on creating databases for  storing and managing data better. In 1982, they named their company Oracle Systems Corporation.

Ellison had a big dream. He wanted his company to create a database that could achieve compatibility with the IBM System r database. But IBM refused to share System R’s code with Ellison. But Ellison was determined to take his company to the No.1 spot in selling databases. In 1990 10% of the staff had to be removed as the indirect result of a false sales strategy. Ellison later admitted that the mistake he made was a really bad one and could have done lots of harm to the company.     

Career Highlights

When IBM delayed its entry into the relational database market, Ellison saw the opportunity to dominate the market in the mid-range systems and microcomputers category.  He pushed for an aggressive sales strategy, as a result of which Oracle was now one of the top companies in the world because of the little or no competition it had. In 1991, Oracle had a good percentage of the market share and was growing at a steady rate. In 1994, Informix became Oracle’s biggest rival. But in 1997, Informix announced a revenue shortfall and thus made Oracle the dominant force in the market.

Ellison was made a director of Apple Computers in 1997. In 2007, Ellison earned a total of $61,180,524. In the year 2009, he made around $57 million. Ellison decided in 2009 to buy Sun Microsystems giving Oracle control of the popular MySQL open-source database which Sun had purchased in 2008. Ellison was reported by The Wall Street Journal to be the best paid CEO in the last decade. He had collected a astonishing $1.84 billion.

Achievements

What makes Ellison different from others is the business acumen he applied in taking his company from being a start-up to be one of the most popular company in the world. This was also because of his grit in accepting his mistakes and learning from them. Using the experience he gained from his failures,  he made the right decisions at the right time to propell his company to became an undisputed leader in its field.

Today he is still CEO of his company and has been the it’s backbone who has ensured that it still continues its dominance that it established in the previous years.

Larry Ellison Exclusive Interview