Oracle was one of the earliest companies to start out from Silicon Valley. Corporations across the world use an Oracle product in one way or another.

Larry Ellison is the founder of Oracle and he is one of the richest individuals on Earth, according to Forbes. Owing to his keen business acumen and technological know-how, he steered Oracle to where it is now. Oracle currently ranks 81 on the Fortune 500 list.

 

• Beginnings

Oracle was co-founded by Larry Ellison with Bob Miner and Ed Oates under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in 1977. Larry Ellison went from one job to another, during which he learned computer and programming skills. Larry was inspired by a paper written by Edgar F. Codd about relational database management systems (RDBMS.) Database management systems are a way to store and access information and it was a huge breakthrough at the time. SDL later changed its name to Regional Software Incorporated and then to Oracle Systems Corporation in 1982.

 

• Growth of Oracle

As a key player in the booming software industry, Oracle grew rapidly and had its initial public offering (IPO) in 1986, after reporting a revenue of $ 55 million dollars. They finally hit the jackpot with their Oracle7 database, which is a management system used for warehousing and online transaction processing.

 

During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, Oracle was selling databases to all the companies riding the wave. When Marc Benioff, who used to work for Larry Ellison, expressed his desire to start his own venture called Salesforce, Larry Ellison invested two million dollars in it. Salesforce now generates a revenue of 10 billion dollars and ranks second on the Fortune 500 list. Oracle later went on to acquire HR software provider PeopleSoft and Sun Microsystems, which was the creator of the Java programming language. This particular acquisition gave Oracle key technology and control of the MySQL database.

 

• Bonus Tidbit

Larry Ellison was the inspiration for Robert Downey Jr. when the latter played the role of Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Larry Ellison also made a cameo appearance in Iron Man 2.

 

Oracle is currently trying to consolidate itself on the cloud computing market which already has giants like Amazon and Google, but is facing an uphill task. However, Larry Ellison took up the position of Chief Technology Officer and hopes to steer the Company towards a good future.

 

Source: Startup Stories
Image Courtesy: Forbes