Larry Ellison

Date of Birth:

17-Aug-1944

Nationality:

Andorra

Profession:

Businessperson

Larry Ellison was born in the Bronx, New York, August 17, 1944, to a single mother, Florence Spellman. When he was nine months old, Ellison contracted pneumonia, and her mother sent her to Chicago to be raised by her aunt and uncle, Lillian and Louis Ellison, who adopted the baby. After high school, Ellison enrolled at the University of Illinois, Champaign (1962), where he was named a student of that year. In his second year, her adoptive mother died, and Ellison dropped out of college. The following fall, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, but ended up alone after the end of the year. Ellison then packed his bags in Berkeley, California, for a pittance, and the next decade left her job at places such as Wells Fargo and Amdahl Corporation. During his college career, Ellison had acquired basic computer skills, and eventually he was able to put them to use as a programmer at Amdahl, where he worked on the IBM's first-ever compatible program. In 1977, Ellison and two Amdahl colleagues formed Software Development Labs and soon entered into an agreement to develop a data management system - which they called Oracle - for the CIA. The company had less than 10 employees and a turnover of less than $ 1 million a year, but in 1981, IBM signed up to use Oracle, and the company's sales doubled every year for the next seven years. Ellison soon renamed the company after its best-selling product.

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Larry Ellison

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QUOTES BY Larry Ellison

"I don't think that's an unreasonable target, ... through a combination of acquisitions and organic growth."

"PeopleSoft is doing everything it can to prevent its shareholders from voting, ... If PeopleSoft's Board is so convinced that the J.D. Edwards acquisition is a great deal, why won't it let their shareholders vote on it?"

"We have no large acquisitions in mind right now."

"The Association for Competitive Technology didn't exist until the Microsoft antitrust trial began, ... It purports to be an independent group that is supporting America, but it was bought and paid for by two Americans -- Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer [Microsoft's CEO]."

"I think the applications space will be diverse and complex five years from now,"

"We are clearly not No. 1 in middleware. You will see us do a number of things in that space, including acquisitions."

"Based on our current pipelines the entire management team believes that the overall year should be very strong, ... Specifically we expect that Oracle's software sales will grow faster this year than last. And margins should continue to improve as well."

"Apple needs to worry about doing something different. It's back to innovation and creativity."

"They are the only ones who destroyed the most innovative company in Silicon Valley in the past decade -- Netscape Communications, ... They paid people not to ship Netscape's browser. They're special."

"We will still be enormously profitable and by far the most profitable enterprise software company,"