Everyone Else Must Fail: The Unvarnished Truth about Oracle and Larry Ellison

by Karen Southwick and  

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0609610694
• ISBN13: 9780609610695
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Crown Business
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

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!!

Hard-hitting and fast-paced

The book seems to accurately portray Larry Ellison's strengths and weaknesses, especially his arrogance in dealing with other people. Too bad the author couldn't have gotten Ellison himself to say more.

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.