Product Description

Karen Southwick’s unauthorized account provides the full story of Larry Ellison’s brilliant, controversial career. Ellison’s drive and fierce ambition created Oracle out of the dust and built it into one of America’s great technology companies, but his unpredictable management style keeps it constantly on the edge of both success and disaster. The hostile bid for PeopleSoft is just the most recent example. With one clever strategic move, Larry Ellison threw much of the business software field into play.

The saying “It’s not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail” has been so often used by or associated with Ellison that most people think it originated with him. It’s actually attributed to Genghis Khan, but it’s a dead-on way to describe not only the way Ellison thinks about competitors but the way he runs Oracle. His weapons are not marauding hordes, but Oracle’s possession of database technology that is crucial for keeping mission-critical information flows working at thousands of organizations, corporations, nonprofits, and government agencies.

Inside Oracle, Ellison has time and again systematically purged key operating, sales, and marketing people who got too powerful for his comfort. Most notable was Ray Lane, Oracle’s president for nine years, who was widely credited with bringing order out of the chaos that was Oracle in the early nineties and growing it into a ten billion dollar company. Ellison got rid of the one key person who was building confidence with Wall Street, business partners, and customers that Oracle was no longer flying by the seat of its pants and had its act together. Ellison’s mania for absolute control and his inability to coexist with the very lieutenants who bring much-needed stability to the company have brought Oracle to the brink of collapse before, and may well do it again.

Ellison is a throwback to an earlier, much more freewheeling version of capitalism, the kind practiced by the nineteenth-century robber barons who ran their companies as private fiefdoms. Larry Ellison is one of the most intriguing and dominant leaders of a major twenty-first-century corporation, and Everyone Else Must Fail raises the question of whether Oracle’s products and the reliance placed in them by so many are too important to be subject to the whims of one man. While giving credit to Ellison’s brilliance and devotion, the book sounds a warning about an ingenious man’s tendency to be his own company’s worst enemy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #790701 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-11
• Released on: 2003-11-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Southwick, a veteran Silicon Valley observer and author of several books (including Silicon Gold Rush), offers a detailed look at Larry Ellison, who created Oracle software. Ellison is one of only a handful of computer pioneers still heading a high-tech company. Southwick praises Ellison's innovation and business skills, but is far more critical of his management style and interpersonal skills. In fact, much of the book is devoted to chronicling horror stories from former employees. Even people who thought they had "worked well together" with Ellison are fired or, more usually, made to feel so uncomfortable that they choose to leave. "Ellison lavishes opportunities upon his favored executives-giving them almost free rein to grow-until he tires of them for one reason or another, or feels threatened by them, and finds a way to get rid of them," writes Southwick. With so many interviews-many quite bitter-with former Oracle employees, the author provides an in-depth look at the company and insights into its business strategies. For example, in a discussion on promotion, she notes, "Oracle's marketing campaigns are unusual in the technology industry in that they directly assail competitors." Ellison emerges as an innovative and smart businessman, albeit unlikable.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap
Karen Southwick?s unauthorized account provides the full story of Larry Ellison?s brilliant, controversial career. Ellison?s drive and fierce ambition created Oracle out of the dust and built it into one of America?s great technology companies, but his unpredictable management style keeps it constantly on the edge of both success and disaster. The hostile bid for PeopleSoft is just the most recent example. With one clever strategic move, Larry Ellison threw much of the business software field into play.

The saying ?It?s not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail? has been so often used by or associated with Ellison that most people think it originated with him. It?s actually attributed to Genghis Khan, but it?s a dead-on way to describe not only the way Ellison thinks about competitors but the way he runs Oracle. His weapons are not marauding hordes, but Oracle?s possession of database technology that is crucial for keeping mission-critical information flows working at thousands of organizations, corporations, nonprofits, and government agencies.

Inside Oracle, Ellison has time and again systematically purged key operating, sales, and marketing people who got too powerful for his comfort. Most notable was Ray Lane, Oracle?s president for nine years, who was widely credited with bringing order out of the chaos that was Oracle in the early nineties and growing it into a ten billion dollar company. Ellison got rid of the one key person who was building confidence with Wall Street, business partners, and customers that Oracle was no longer flying by the seat of its pants and had its act together. Ellison?s mania for absolute control and his inability to coexist with the very lieutenants who bring much-needed stability to the company have brought Oracle to the brink of collapse before, and may well do it again.

Ellison is a throwback to an earlier, much more freewheeling version of capitalism, the kind practiced by the nineteenth-century robber barons who ran their companies as private fiefdoms. Larry Ellison is one of the most intriguing and dominant leaders of a major twenty-first-century corporation, and Everyone Else Must Fail raises the question of whether Oracle?s products and the reliance placed in them by so many are too important to be subject to the whims of one man. While giving credit to Ellison?s brilliance and devotion, the book sounds a warning about an ingenious man?s tendency to be his own company?s worst enemy.

About the Author
KAREN SOUTHWICK, an executive editor at CNET News.com, has been a writer and editor for Forbes ASAP and Upside, as well as metropolitan daily newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle. She is also the author of three previous books: Silicon Gold Rush: The Next Generation of High-Tech Stars Rewrites the Rules of Business; The Kingmakers: Venture Capital and the Money Behind the Net; and High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems. She lives in San Francisco.

Customer Reviews

Well researched, poorly written
This account of the politics and actions of Oracle presents the reader with a ton of great material - insider reports, odd tidbits, lots of interview material with the main cast of characters from Lane on down. But it presents all the material with such unfamiliarity with the world of enterprise software that it is almost unreadable. The author's account chastises Oracle for being hard to work with citing examples of botched projects, wasted IT funds, and non-working products - Hey, enterprise applications are tough, really tough. Numerous comparisons are made to other companies (e.g. PSFT, SAP, etc), but the propaganda of the other companies is taken verbatim and the bad light is shined on Oracle. Let's face it all software companies --- all companies for that matter -- have happy customers and really pissed off customers. Oracle is different only in that they rarely admit to any wrong doing.

But the above does not stop one from reading the really interesting stuff that the author has dug up - it is the unbearable amateurish writing style of the author that really will end up driving you crazy by the end of the book. She just keeps repeating herself over and over again it drove me crazy. Ad did I tell you that she just keeps repeating herself over and over again. And then he said "She just keeps repeating herself over and over again." Message to author: your readers got it the first time around.

Read it, you will like it!!
"Everyone else must fail" by book by Karen Southwick is a must read if you want an example of how the goddess of luck favors those who grab their opportunities. When Oracle cofounders Ellison, Miner and Oates land a consulting assignment to feed themselves they know they can spend some time building a relational database without having to worry about their bread and butter.

A few decades later 98 of the top 100 companies in the world would use Oracle software in their businesses. This well researched book gives us inside glimpses of a company which overcame the growing pains of crossing the billion dollar mark, faced bankruptcy, shot itself in the foot with insensitive customer support and successfully completed the largest acquisition in the enterprise software industry. The author also tracks the maturing of the relational database, middleware and enterprise application business. If you want to understand technology trends especially those in the enterprise application industry, grab this opportunity to educate yourself. This is one of the best I've seen on Oracle thus far. I wonder whether anyone will have the energy to write another!!

On Target!!
The author has done an exemplary job of interviewing the right people that can give an accurate picture of what is going on inside Oracle and with Ellison. On most subjects she was right on target. The situation is actually even worse than presented in the book given my years experience as an employee. Oracle could have been the IBM of the software world if only Ellison could listen and work with his managers. What he did was to destroy one of the most successful management teams of the 90's and totally ignore what customers and partners have been telling him. If this does not change, it is curtains for Oracle.
Ms. Southwick should be complimented for being brave enough to take on these subjects and report them in a clear and understandable way.