BILLIONAIRE SUCCESS STORY : Larry Ellison - Oracle Corporation

Born: August 17, 1944
Age: 63
Country Of Citizenship: United States
Residence: Redwood City, California , United States, North America
Occupation: Chief executive officer
Fortune: Self made
Source: Oracle
Net worth: $26.0 billion USD Forbes (2007)
Website: Ellison at Oracle.com
Industry: Software
Marital Status: Married, 2 children
Education: University of Illinois, Drop Out
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Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is the billionaire co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, a major database software company.Ellison was born in New York City to Florence Spellman, a 19-year-old unwed Jewish mother. At his mother's request, he was given to his mother's aunt and uncle in Chicago to raise. Lillian Spellman Ellison and Louis Ellison adopted him when he was nine months old. Ellison did not learn the name of his mother or meet her until he was 48; the identity of his father is unknown.

The Ellison home was a two-bedroom apartment in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood, populated mostly with lower middle class Jews. Ellison remembers his adoptive mother as warm and loving, in contrast to his austere, unsupportive, and often distant adoptive father, a Russian Jew from the Crimea who adopted the name Ellison to honor his point of entry into the USA, Ellis Island, as well as to conceal his Jewish ancestry. Louis was a modest government employee who had made a small fortune in Chicago real estate, only to lose it during the Great Depression.

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.

During the 1970s, Ellison worked for Ampex Corporation. One of his projects was a database for the CIA, which he named "Oracle," the abstract idea which was dismissed by a University of Chicago professor.

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 refusing to share System R's code. 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 over 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.

Around this time, Oracle fell behind technically to Sybase. In 1990-1993, Sybase was the fastest growing database company and the database industry's darling vendor, but soon fell victim to its merger mania. Sybase's 1993 merger with PowerSoft resulted in a loss of focus on its core database technology. In 1993, Sybase sold the rights to its database software running under the Windows operating system to Microsoft Corporation, which now markets it under the name "SQL Server."

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. Forbes listed Ellison's 2005 net worth as $18.4 billion, making him one of the richest people in America, and the ninth richest man in the world. For a short period in 2000, Ellison was the richest man in the world. In 2006, Forbes ranked Ellison as the richest Californian. In interviews, Ellison notes that his actual wealth — money that he is realistically free to spend — is more like $2 billion, and that if he tried to sell all of his Oracle stock, its price would fall to zero. Ellison also owns large stakes in both Salesforce.com and NetSuite.

Being one of the world's wealthiest persons, Ellison is known for his extravagant lifestyle. Ellison is the second largest financier of BMW Oracle Racing, which unsuccessfully competed to be selected as the challenger for the 2007 America's Cup on behalf of the Golden Gate Yacht Club of San Francisco. BMW Oracle Racing was the Challenger of Record for the 2007 America's Cup in Valencia, Spain until eliminated from the 2007 Louis Vuitton Cup challenger selection series in the semi-finals. Oracle Corporation does not provide any financial support to BMW Oracle Racing but grants permission for use of its logo and branding.

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 won the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race in his yacht "Sayonara". A storm that broke out during the race cost 6 sailors (none from the Sayonara) their lives, an experience that led Ellison to swear off personal participation in ocean racing.

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 owns many exotic cars, including a McLaren F1, Bentley Flying Spur, Bentley Continental GT, and several Acura NSX, which is his favorite daily driver.

Ellison is a certificated pilot and has owned several unusual aircraft, including fighter jets. Ellison has been cited several times by the 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 (34 019 kg). San Jose granted him a personal waiver from these regulations in 2001.

Ellison styled his estimated $200 million Woodside, California estate after feudal Japanese architecture, complete with a man-made 2.3 acre lake and the most extensive seismic retrofit available with current technology ( 37°24′44.34″N, 122°14′51.40″W). In 2004 and 2005, Ellison purchased more than 12 properties in Malibu, California worth more than $180 million. The $65 million Ellison spent on five contiguous lots on Malibu's Carbon Beach was the most costly residential transaction in United States history until Ron Perelman sold his Palm Beach Florida, compound for $70 million later that same year, according to industry writer Jeffrey Bellamar.

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.


References
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IMDB bio
wired.com
SatireWire
Snopes
Oracle Official Site
Larry Ellison Oracle executive biography
Forbes - World's Richest People 2006
Forbes 400 listing
FAQ about Oracle Corporation
The Ellison Medical Foundation
Zinko, Larry Ellison's most important merger