Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

"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!!

I find the character of Larry Ellison very interesting but this book is dedicated to bashing him in spite of his success at Oracle. If this were the only fault it would be fine, but as others have said, this is a very poorly written book. Move on...

I was expecting a more balanced account of Larry Ellison and the rise of Oracle as a software giant. As an unauthorized biography, I expected the author to dish some dirt. However, other than praise for being a technical visionary, Ellison is portrayed as the Darth Vader of Silicon Valley. That being said, the text is a compelling read. On the business side, the text focuses on problems and solutions within sales and customer service. Very little was presented on Oracle's development practices.

If you haven't figured out that Larryland is run like a private empire and the founder has an ego to match his billion dollar bank account, then this book is a good place to start. Karen Southwick, a former Forbes ASAP editor has written this book without any direct access to Ellison. Ok, at least it's not the softball co-authored love letter that SoftWar is, but unfortunately, not by much.

The book covers the history of Oracle from its development of the first commercial relational database (written for the CIA based on published articles by IBM) to its present day situation as a multi-billion dollar behemoth that is hated by both competitors and, in Southwick's views, customers. The book covers the rise of Oracle in the go-go 80's when it paid sales reps in gold coins to sell software that wasn't ready, to its adolescent financial crisis, the unceremonial firing of every known Oracle executive other than Ellison himself, and finally the resurgence of Oracle as a major industry force. Unfortunately the book has less drama than the average hair-band "Behind the Music" episode on MTV.

I admit when I read excerpts, I had high expectations for the rest of the book. There may be an interesting story about Larry Ellison and Oracle, but this isn't it. On the other hand, if you're eager to compile a who's-who list of fired Oracle execs (Bennioff, Bloom, Conway, Jarvis, Lane, Nussbaum, Scholes, Siebel, Sumner...) and you want to hear them dish, hey it's cheap.

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.

Ray Lane is a great business man.
Larry Ellison is a bad person.
That about sums up this book.

Very onesided book. She repeats herself a lot.

On the plus side you can learn some of the history about the world's greatest database company.