Larry Ellison
More info
- Born
- Known for
- Co-founder of Oracle
- Nationality
- American
Read Edgar Codd's paper on the relational model, realised IBM would not move quickly, and built the company that did instead.
Ellison founded the company in 1977 with Bob Miner and Ed Oates. The insight was commercial rather than technical: IBM had researched the relational database but hesitated to cannibalise its existing product. Oracle reached the market first and locked in customers before the competition woke up.
He was CEO for thirty-seven years, until 2014, and has been chief technology officer and chairman since. The company's reputation for hard licensing and aggressive sales is largely his imprint, as is the 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems — which handed Oracle both Java and MySQL, the latter its own principal competitor.