Lawrence J. Ellison
Lawrence Joseph Ellison (Bronx, New York, August 17, 1944), better known as Larry Ellison, is an American billionaire entrepreneur and computer theorist, co-founder of the Oracle company, of which he owns 35% and was CEO from 1977 to 2015. Considered eccentric for his extravagant tastes, he is one of the best-known billionaires and in 2021 he ranked 7th among the largest fortunes personalities in the world according to Forbes magazine. In addition, Ellison owns 98% of Lanai, the sixth largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, which has caused many difficulties for its inhabitants.
On September 18, 2014, Oracle announced that Ellison would immediately step down as CEO of the company, serving as CTO thereafter. In his place Mark Hurd and Safra Catz were named CEOs. In this way, Ellison parted ways with a position he held for 37 years, since the company's creation in 1977.
Biography
Ellison was born in New York City. His mother, Florence Spellman, single, gave birth at the age of 19; subsequently, she gave her son to her sister to be raised in Chicago. Lillian Spellman Ellison and Louis Ellison – of Russian origin – adopted Lawrence when he was nine months old. After 48 years, Lawrence finally met his mother. The identity of his father is unknown.
The Ellisons' home was a two-bedroom apartment in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood, inhabited mostly by lower-middle-income couples. Larry remembers his adoptive mother as caring and caring, as opposed to his father as austere, unbearable, and distant.
He left the University of Illinois at the end of his sophomore year without taking his final exams due to the death of his adoptive mother. After spending a summer in Northern California where he lived with his friend Chuck Weiss, he enrolled at the University of Chicago majoring in computer science from which he never graduated. At the age of 20 he moved to California permanently.
Professional career
During the 1970s, Ellison worked for Ampex Corporation and then for two other companies.
For the company he worked for, after a contractor failed, he did a custom development. For this, he hired his two former bosses. They formed a company. Upon successful completion of the project, he told them that they would not make custom development again, but rather something that they could sell many times.
Oracle
Larry Ellison, Ed Oates and Bob Miner founded in 1977 a consulting company called Software Development Laboratories (SDL), and time later they get a contract with the CIA to design a special database system with key code "Oracle". Ellison and Miner had read an article in the magazine IBM Journal of Research and Development where a preliminary version of the SQL language was described, based on the article by E. F. Codd where the relational model proposed: "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks". IBM had authorized to publish Codd's work, after trying failed to do an IBM System RDBMS, which was also based on Codd's theories. IBM refused to share R system code. Oracle's initial version was 2; there was no Oracle 1. The version number intended to imply that all errors that might exist in an earlier version had already been corrected.
Partners founded Oracle by placing US$1400 of their own money, under the name of Software Development Laboratories (SDL). In 1979, the company became known as Relational Software Inc., later renamed Oracle after the success of the Oracle database flagship product. The name was taken from an Intelligence project, which was sold by the database.
In 1982 and seeking coherence with its business objectives, SDL changes its name to Relational Software Incorporated (RSI). The company seeks to have a product that was compatible with IBM's SQL, and also to focus on a minicomputer market, thus covering a segment that at that time IBM was not interested in.
In 1984 RSI changes its name to Oracle Systems Corporation, and soon after it is shortened to the current "Oracle Corporation". The following year begins to market Oracle V3, adding transaction management through COMMIT and ROLLBACK instructions. In fact, the product is recoded in C which allows to expand the running platforms to include Unix environments, when up here it was only about Digital VAX/VMS.
In 1986, Oracle V4 supports read consistency and in 1985 Oracle V5 begins to support the client/server model to join the boom in the emergence of networks. In addition, implementation of I'd rather distributed. The same year 1986 was when Oracle began to quote on the NASDAQ index of the New York Stock Exchange (United States)
In 1989, Oracle's ERP, known as Oracle Financials®, is launched on the market, along with version 6 of the engine, which adds a procedural language (Pl/Sql), blocking at the row level and the possibilities of backup without the need to complete the processes involved.
In 1990, in the only quarter where he lost money, Oracle fired around 10% (about 400 people) of its workers due to a lack of match between cash and income. This crisis came because of "the Oracle marketing strategy," in which sales people were urged to induce potential customers to purchase as many programs as possible at the same time. Sales staff reserve the value of future license sales in the current quarter, increasing their bonds. This became a problem when future sales did not materialize. Oracle finally had to rethink its profits on two occasions, and also solve the action demands of the class court that arose from the fact that he had exaggerated his profits. Ellison, I would later say that Oracle had made "an incredible business error."
Although IBM dominated the mainframes market, with hierarchical and networked databases (SQL/DS), it never traded its RDBMS (System/R) and it took several years to enter the relationship database market in UNIX and Windows operating systems. This left the door open for Sybase, Oracle and Informix – and eventually Microsoft – to master medium-range and microcomputer systems. Oracle was the first commercial RDBMS.
Around this time, Oracle fell behind Sybase. In the period 1990-1993, Sybase was the most growing relational database management company and supplier of the industry of the beloved database, but was soon the victim of its merger mania. In 1993 the merger of Sybase with Powersoft resulted in a loss of concentration in its central database technology. In 1993, Sybase sold the rights of its database software that run under Microsoft Corporation's Windows operating system, which is now marketed under the name of SQL Server.
In 1992, to become a complete database, Oracle V7h appears, where the "h" comes from "datawareHouse", although the most significant is the support of referenceal integrity, the storage and execution of programs written in Pl/Sql within the engine and the definition of triggers database.
In 1994, Informix Software became the most important rival of Oracle. The intense war between the executive director of Informix Phil White and Ellison was regular news of Silicon Valley for three years. In April 1997, Informix announced an estimate of significant revenue and earnings from regularizations. Phil White finally ended up in jail. Informix was absorbed by IBM in 2000.
In 1997, being the Internet already a reality and with the new programming paradigms starting to appear to try to shift to the imperative paradigms, Oracle V8 begins to support object-oriented developments and the storage and execution of multimedia content, and in 1999 it comes to light Oracle 8i to be in line with the requirements of the Internet, from which the "i" of the name is derived. In addition, the engine incorporates a Java Virtual Machine (Java Virtual Machineinternal to support the storage and execution of Java code within the engine.
Once Informix and Sybase were defeated, Oracle enjoyed years of industry dominance to the Microsoft SQL Server site in the late 1990s and the acquisition of IBM Informix Software in 2001 to complement its DB2 database. Nowadays, Oracle's main competition for new database licenses in UNIX, Linux and Windows operating systems is with IBM DB2, and with Microsoft SQL Server - whose base installed is mostly on Windows although there is also a version for Linux since 2017-. IBM DB2 continues to dominate the mainframe database market.
In 2001, Oracle 9i brings over 400 new features including the ability to manipulate XML documents, high availability options, cluster databases. An important advance is made on the definition of virtual databases (VPD), authentication via LDAP and self-administration of the database.
In 2003, Oracle Corporation launches 10g, where "g" comes from "Grid"incorporating database management and management Grid Computinga set of databases whose space management, resources and services can be managed as if they were one.
In 2005, two years later, the company acquires PeopleSoft, a RRHH company and ERP applications.
In 2007, Oracle announced the latest version of its database in New York City, called Oracle 11g, the next step in the history of technological innovation of Oracle Corporation.
In April 2009, Oracle announced its intention to purchase Sun Microsystems after a strip and loosens with IBM and Hewlett-Packard. The European Union approved the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle on January 21, 2010 and agreed that “the acquisition of Sun by Oracle has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products”.
In September 2014, its founder, Larry Ellison, withdrew from the company's general leadership as executive chair of the Board of Directors and CEO of Technology. In their replacement they were appointed as general directors Safra Catz and Mark Hurd.
In 2018 the company announced the release of Oracle Autonomous Database, considers the first autonomous database.Contenido relacionado
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