Product Description

In a business where great risks, huge fortunes, and even bigger egos are common, Larry Ellison stands out as one of the most outspoken, driven, and daring leaders of the software industry. The company he cofounded and runs, Oracle, is the number one business software company. Perhaps even more than Microsoft's, Oracle's products are essential to today's networked world.

In Softwar, journalist Matthew Symonds gives readers exclusive and intimate insight into both Oracle and the man who made it and runs it. As well as relating the story of Oracle's often bumpy path to industry dominance, Symonds deals with the private side of Ellison's life. With unlimited insider access granted by Ellison himself, Symonds captures the intensity and, some would say, the recklessness that have made Ellison a legend.

With a new and expanded epilogue for the paperback edition that tells the story behind Oracle's epic struggle to win control of PeopleSoft, Softwar is the most complete portrait undertaken of the man and his empire -- a unique and gripping account of both the way the computing industry really works and an extraordinary life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #285925 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Amazon.com
Softwar is a biography of Larry Ellison and his company, Oracle. As such, it's simultaneously a portrait of a clever and driven man, a case study of a successful software development company, and a tableau of the commercial software industry from its beginnings, through the dot-com craze, and into the present era. Matthew Symonds, who began this project while working as the editor of the excellent technology section of the Economist, has done a great job with all three elements of his project, thanks in no small part to the tremendous access he was given and to his close collaboration with Ellison.

Collaboration is very nearly the right word, as Ellison reviewed Symonds' manuscript before publication and, while he did not alter it, he did make a large number of comments, which appear in the book as footnotes. As Symonds is a good journalist who attributes most of his material, Ellison is able to take issue immediately with statements other people make about him and his company. The overall effect is hypertextual, and represents an important new biographical technique that other writers should imitate. Softwar succeeds because Ellison has a fantastically interesting life, tremendous experience, and carefully considered opinions, and because Symonds communicates them with clarity and style. --David Wall

Topics covered: The life, times, acquaintances, tastes, toys, and opinions of Larry Ellison, the database entrepreneur and CEO of Oracle Corporation.

From Publishers Weekly
Symonds was technology editor at the Economist when Ellison invited him to collaborate on a book about e-business, but the journalist decided he would rather write a profile of the software tycoon, one of Silicon Valley's most notorious figures. Oracle's database programs have become integral to the Internet and other networked computer systems, and Oracle's head is convinced that he can surpass Microsoft as the industry leader. But he's also developed a reputation for his aggressive corporate tactics and personal flamboyance. Ellison agreed to cooperate with the project, but as part of the deal, he reserved the right to respond, which he does in a series of running footnotes. Sometimes he only uses the opportunity to mouth business platitudes, but he also refutes stories, cracks jokes and even argues with other sources. Although the book deals extensively with Oracle's efforts to promote a new software package, it comes to life most when it follows Ellison outside the office-prepping his sailboat for a run at the America's Cup or overseeing the final touches on a Japanese garden complex. Symonds's near-total access to his subject leads to intimate observations that verge on personal advice, as when the writer suggests how best to handle a top Oracle executive or comments on the relationship between Ellison and his two children. But he remains objective enough to point out several mistakes in the past management of Oracle (many of which Ellison acknowledges or clarifies). Even without its unusual counterpoint, the book would stand as a compelling portrayal of one of the computer industry's most influential leaders.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
There has been a war brewing in the software industry that most computer users don't even know about. Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, wants to supplant the current Windows-based client-server network architecture with a totally Internet-based solution that would simplify computing and make Microsoft's server software obsolete. Even now, Oracle is the dominant software in business; every time you do a Google search or buy something on Amazon.com, you are using it. Anyone who craves a play-by-play account of Ellison and the evolution of the number-one relational database in the world can really sink their teeth into this. There is a slightly bizarre twist to this high-tech tale: Ellison himself gets to throw in running commentary at the bottom of many pages, augmenting and often contradicting the author's text in his own brash style. Beware if you 're not up on your geekspeak, though, as the casual reader will get lost in all the IT systems acronyms thrown around, such as CRM, ERP, HR and TPC-C. More entertaining than the technical jargon is the ruthless backstabbing that goes on between Ellison and big-name competitors such as Microsoft, Seibel Systems, PeopleSoft and i2 Technologies. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Very interesting
I have to admit that this book really caught me. It isn't light reading, and it isn't a beacon of objectivity, but the book is packed with action, and very little of it is filler. Having Ellison comment on this is also very interesting read. The book is written the clarity, even if lot of it is just quoting people the author has interviewed, but it does seem like he was asking the right questions and his interviewees did not hesitate to answer candidly.

The book doesn't actually talk much about Oracle's database, but is more focused on Ellison's new integrated suite vision. While it certainly is interesting, I believe Oracle is still very much a database company so the database part is conspicuously over-downplayed/ignored. And the book does tend to go back and forth in time quite a bit.

But the book is worth every minute. Ellison's management practice isn't textbook materials, but in this case, it does seem to work.

Great Read, but Flawed
True to its subtitle Softwar does indeed deliver an 'intimate portrait' of billionaire business leader Larry Ellison. Unfortunately, although the book is enthralling and features an incredibly interesting format including written responses by Ellison to points raised by Symonds, it falls short in two important areas for biographies.

Firstly, Symonds is not objective - he clearly worked very closely with Ellison and certainly paints a more rosy picture of the complicated man than a more impartial observer may. Secondly, the structure of the book is lacking. The first section of the book (although it is not actually divided as a section) covers Ellison's business life chronoligically and perhaps in too detailed a manner to always remain interesting (there's an alphabet soup of executive names that are never heard from again). Then what I would consider the second section of the book jumps around from business to personal ventures and lacks a real 'feeling of time'. A more traditional fully integrated narrative of the personal and business sides to Ellison's life would perhaps have been superior since it's difficult to gage how much pressures in one area of Ellison's life are affecting the other.

Even with its flaws, Softwar is well written and comes as close to being autobiographical as a non-autobiography can. The subject himself is certainly interesting enough to warrant the 500 pages, and the unique response format is refreshing.

very interesting but not objetive
very interesting book overall, paints larry in a very (probably almost too) positive light. (the author was selected by larry to write the book.) the most interesting part is that larry adds his own notes to the bottom of various pages. the parts about sailing at the end were sort of boring, but it's nice to know that larry is planning on donating to medical foundations when he retires from oracle.