DOCUMENTARY On Larry Ellison | The Story Of Oracle | Software Billionaire | Biography - YouTube

He's the samurai warrior of Silicon Valley. Larry's attitude is, if you want to compete against me, then you'd be prepared to be crushed. Larry Ellison started Oracle Software over 30 years ago, and it has made him the highest paid executive over the last decade, with a total compensation of $1.84 billion.

他是硅谷的武士战士。 Larry的态度是，如果你想与我竞争，那你就要做好被击败的准备。 Larry Ellison在30多年前创办了Oracle软件，并且在过去十年中成为薪酬最高的高管，总薪酬达到18.4亿美元。

There was nobody better than Larry at making him customer and believe that he could change that person's business life with his product. He sees around the corner well before many of us get to the end of the street. He'll do whatever it takes to win in the office.

没有人比拉里更擅长让他的顾客相信他能用自己的产品改变他们的商业生活。他比我们许多人更早地洞察到未来的发展。他会竭尽所能在办公室中取得胜利。

SAP, the German software firm, was ordered to pay Oracle $1.3 billion or on the ocean. There is absolutely no doubt that he hates to lose. His company's technology has become the backbone of the world's information systems, from government to online commerce. The brazen billionaire is an ambitious provocateur with a singular management style.

德国软件公司SAP被命令向Oracle支付13亿美元或面临重罚。毫无疑问，这家公司对输掉官司十分不满。他们的技术已成为世界信息系统的支柱，涵盖从政府到在线商务的各个领域。这位胆大妄为的亿万富翁是一位野心勃勃的挑衅者，拥有独特的管理风格。

I have a theory that Larry's succession plan for Oracle is he is trying to figure out a way that when he's six feet under in a grave, he can still run Oracle. I have a question. If you know anything about Oracle's Larry Ellison, it probably goes something like this. I've got a Bugatti, the fastest car in the world. This home costs $200 million. The fastest sailboat that's ever been built. I'm addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win. He's a high-flying adrenaline junkie and an unapologetic collector of expensive toys and real estate.

我有一个理论，即拉里（Larry）为Oracle设计的继任计划是他正在尝试找到一种方法，以便当他躺在墓穴里时，仍可以管理Oracle。我有一个问题。如果你对Oracle的拉里·埃里森（Larry Ellison）有所了解，可能会是这样的。我有一辆布加迪（Bugatti），这是世界上最快的车。这座房子价值2亿美元。还有史上最快的帆船。我痴迷于胜利。你赢得越多，你就越想赢。他是一个高飞的肾上腺素迷和坦率地收集昂贵的玩具和房地产的人。

It's not really a big smile. I got bored. He spent $400 million to bring the 2010 America's Cup, the oldest active trophy in sports, back to America for the first time in 15 years. But his success comes from something far less flashy. Some of the world's most essential software, tools you use every day, but probably don't realize that it's his company making them work. Almost everybody in the world uses Oracle. They just don't know it. If you do any kind of government transaction with almost any government in the world, any business transaction with almost any internet business in the world or any traditional business if you have a credit card, if you have a cell phone, if you have any of the modern things in life, if you live today, I think you probably use Oracle.

这不是真正的夸张笑容。我感到无聊了。他花了4亿美元将体育界最古老的活动奖杯，即2010年美洲杯，带回美国，这是15年来的第一次。但他的成功却来自一个相当低调的领域。全球一些最基本的软件和工具，你每天都在使用，但可能没有意识到是他的公司在使其运转。几乎全世界的人都在使用Oracle，只是他们不知道而已。如果你与世界上几乎任何政府进行任何类型的交易，与世界上几乎任何互联网企业进行任何业务交易，或者如果你拥有信用卡，拥有手机，拥有现代生活中的任何一种现代设备，如果你生活在今天，我相信你可能在使用Oracle。

Larry Ellison arguably created the most important computer software you've ever heard of. He was the man behind the curtain for a tremendous change in the way we all live. Ellison remained behind that curtain when we tried to reach him to participate in this program.

拉里·埃里森可以说是创造了你曾经听过的最重要的计算机软件。他是背后幕布的人，致力于让我们所有人的生活发生了巨大变革。当我们试图联系他参与这个节目时，埃里森依然隐藏在那幕布后面。

Born in the Bronx in 1944, Ellison grew up in Chicago. When he was 12, his father bluntly gave him some surprising news. My dad just said, right before dinner, oh, by the way, you were adopted and we're having meatloaf tonight. It was so shocking, I just put it away and thought about it for years without really confronting all and realizing all of the implications.

艾里森于1944年出生在布朗克斯，在芝加哥长大。当他12岁时，他的父亲坦白地告诉了他一些令人惊讶的消息。“就在晚饭前，我爸爸突然说，顺便说一句，你是被领养的，今晚我们吃肉loaf。”这消息令我震惊，我只是将其放在一边，思考了多年，没有真正面对和意识到其中的所有含义。

He dropped out of college twice. Ellison was a mediocre student and disliked formal education. Mike Wilson is an editor for the St. Petersburg Times and interviewed Ellison extensively for his biography. Larry was not interested in following the rules at school, in the family, or anywhere else. Larry needed to get out from underneath the shadow of Lewis Ellison and prove to his father that he could make something of himself.

他两次退学了。埃里森是一个平庸的学生，对正规教育不感兴趣。迈克·威尔逊是圣彼得堡时报的编辑，为埃里森的传记进行了广泛的采访。拉里对于在学校、家庭或其他任何地方遵守规则都不感兴趣。拉里需要摆脱刘易斯·埃里森的阴影，向父亲证明他能有所作为。

His flair for the fast lane was obvious early. Larry went out and bought himself a turquoise blue thunderbird. He was a stylish guy. He wanted to impress people. He got in that car and he drove it to California. Larry Ellison was a young man with a great deal of potential. His trip to California was critical to who he would become. Ellison settled in Berkeley and set out to make a living writing code.

他对快车道的天赋很早就显而易见了。拉里买了一辆绿松石蓝色的雷鸟汽车。他是一个时尚的人。他想给人留下印象。他上了车，驾驶着它去了加利福尼亚。拉里·埃里森是一个富有潜力的年轻人。他去加利福尼亚对他日后的发展至关重要。埃里森在伯克利定居下来，并着手通过编写代码谋生。

In 1973, he worked at the computer electronics maker, Amdau. There, he met Stuart Fagan. They've remained friends for over 35 years. I went into my cubicle the first day I worked there and across the hall were a couple of guys who never seemed to do any work. They just talked all the time. And one of them did nothing but talk about himself, how smart he was, how stupid everyone else was, and how he really ought to be running everything. And that was Larry Ellison.

1973年，他在计算机电子制造商Amdau工作。在那里，他遇到了Stuart Fagan。他们已经是超过35年的朋友了。我在第一天上班时走进我的隔间，对面的大厅里有一对似乎从来没做过任何工作的家伙。他们总是闲聊不停。而其中一个人只会自吹自擂，说自己多聪明，其他人都多蠢，还说他真的应该掌控一切。那个人就是Larry Ellison。

Ellison was a talented but impatient programmer, desperate to find something of his own to control. To say he, he had the attention span of a tumbleweed is to overestimate it. I would say more of the attention span of a lightning bolt. But his attention focused when he landed a job at a company called Ampex. Ampex was struggling with a project funded by, of all places, the information-driven CIA. The project was codenamed Oracle. The CIA needed a system to store and retrieve vast amounts of foreign intelligence, concerned with its various sensitive operations and missions.

埃里森是一个有天赋但是不耐烦的程序员，渴望找到属于自己掌控的东西。如果说他的注意力持续时间像风滚草，那就高估了。我会说他的注意力更像闪电一样短暂。但在他进入一个名叫Ampex的公司工作后，他的注意力集中了起来。Ampex公司正在为一项由以信息为导向的CIA资助的项目苦苦挣扎。这个项目的代号是Oracle。CIA需要一个系统来存储和检索大量的外国情报，涉及其各种敏感的行动和任务。

For Ellison, it was the job of a lifetime. And would plant the seeds for his future. In the 1970s, information storage meant putting data on real-to-real tape, which was just too slow and inconsistent for the CIA, and too slow for Ellison. He left Ampex and later started his own company with his friend and programming genius, Bob Miner.

对于埃里森来说，这是一生中的工作机会。这也为他日后奠定了基础。上世纪70年代，信息存储意味着将数据放在真实的磁带上，对于CIA来说，这种方式过于缓慢和不一致，对于埃里森来说也太慢了。他离开了安培克斯，随后与他的朋友和编程天才鲍勃·迈纳一起创立了自己的公司。

Bob and Larry were a perfect odd couple for Silicon Valley. Bob had all of the engineering smarts, the technical ability Larry, on the other hand, had the sales ability, the visionary ability, the ability to go to a customer and explain, here's how your business can change. With this original handwritten sign and $1,200, they started Software Development Laboratories, or SDL. Ellison recruited friends at Oates and Stuart Fagan to help program. He did want me to join him, and he's going to start some kind of company. And I thought that was the stupid idea I'd ever heard of. Larry wasn't famous for finishing things. I used to say he's a total flake and he'll never amount to anything, and I was half right.

鲍勃和拉里是硅谷完美的搭档。鲍勃拥有工程智慧、技术能力，而拉里则拥有销售能力、远见能力以及向客户解释商业变革的能力。带着这张原始手写的标牌和1,200美元，他们创办了软件开发实验室(Software Development Laboratories，简称SDL)。埃里森召集了他的朋友Oates和Stuart Fagan来帮助进行编程。他确实想让我加入他，而且他要创办某种类型的公司。而我当时认为这是最愚蠢的主意。拉里并不以完成事情而出名。以前我经常说他是一个完全不靠谱，永远不会有所作为的人，而这其中有一半是对的。

Ellison's new company needed a product. And after reading an obscure IBM research paper, he thought he had it. A method of sorting information that was vastly superior to anything that had come before. It was called a relational database. According to Gary Bloom, who worked with Ellison for 14 years, it was a complex name, but a simple idea. The relational database, you know, what is it? It's a collection of data and information that's very simply put into a format that makes it very easy to search and find that information. It's nothing more complicated than that. IBM didn't see the potential of what they had. Ellison did. I said, oh, my God, we can beat IBM to markets because IBM doesn't believe in their own idea. Ellison believed and asked programmer Bruce Scott to start writing code. For me, it's just cool technology and kind of fun, but for Larry, you know, he saw a company out of it and he saw a market out of it.

埃里森的新公司需要一个产品。在阅读了一篇晦涩的IBM研究论文之后，他觉得自己找到了。一种比以往任何方法都要优秀得多的信息排序方法。这就是所谓的关系型数据库。根据与埃里森共事了14年的加里·布卢姆的说法，这是一个很复杂的名字，但是一个简单的思想。这个关系型数据库，你知道吗？它是一个将数据和信息简单地放入一个格式中，使得搜索和找到这些信息变得非常容易的集合。就是这么简单，没有更复杂的东西。IBM没有看到他们所拥有的潜力。埃里森看到了。我说，哦，我的天，我们可以在市场上击败IBM，因为IBM不相信他们自己的想法。埃里森相信，并要求程序员布鲁斯·斯科特开始编写代码。对我来说，这只是一种很酷的技术，有点好玩，但对于拉里来说，你知道的，他看到了其中的商机和市场。

We weren't sure Larry was right, but we needed the jobs, and it was a struggle all the time. Larry was under a lot of pressure to get some money and somehow. In 1977, at age 34, Larry Ellison's startup software company was busy creating a smart database they thought would revolutionize how companies retrieve, manage, and analyze data. Three rooms and a little lobby area. There were four of us who were writing programs. Larry was mostly involved in finding customers, and that was a bizarre idea because we had no software. All the things that you would read in books of somebody being a leader, he wasn't, but he was tenacious, he would never give up on anything.

我们不确定Larry是对的，但我们需要这份工作，而且一直都很艰难。Larry承受着巨大的压力，必须设法赚到一些钱。1977年，34岁的Larry Ellison创办的软件初创公司正忙着开发一款智能数据库，他们认为这将彻底改变公司检索、管理和分析数据的方式。公司只有三个房间和一个小休息区，我们四个人都在编写程序。Larry主要负责寻找客户，这听起来很荒唐，因为我们没有软件可供销售。所有关于一个领导者的书里写的事，他都不符合，但他很顽强，从来不放弃任何事情。

Ellison chased and cajoled customers, becoming the company's chief evangelist. There was nobody better than Larry at making a business person, making a customer believe that he could change that person's business life with his product. Knowing they still needed a smarter solution for the monumental task of managing worldwide intelligence, Ellison sold his database to the CIA, his first customer. He called the new software Oracle Version 2. There was no Version 1 because everyone thought, well, no one buys Version 1, it's buggy, so we started with Version 2. Our Version 2 was at least as buggy as anyone's Version 1, and I'd describe those early versions as the roach motel of databases, the data went in, but it didn't come out. In 1982, Ellison also took the name Oracle for his company.

埃里森追逐和哄骗客户，成为公司的首席传教士。在让客户相信他的产品可以改变其商业生活方面，没有人比拉里更擅长。尽管知道他们仍然需要更智能的解决方案来管理全球情报，埃里森还是将他的数据库卖给了中央情报局，这是他的第一个客户。他将这个新软件称为Oracle 2版，因为大家都认为第一版无人购买，存在缺陷，所以我们直接从第二版开始。我们的第二版至少和任何人的第一版一样有缺陷，我将那些早期版本描述为数据库中的蟑螂酒店，数据进去了，但却无法取出。1982年，埃里森还为他的公司取名为Oracle。

He targeted government agencies and major corporations in his own unique way. I remember him telling me very distinctly one time, Bruce, we can't be successful unless we lie to customers. For some reason, Larry told us the Bank of America, I think he told us there were 15 of us, when in fact there were five of us. I'm not sure why the Bank of America would think differently of you if you were five or fifteen, but Larry had given him a number which was a little larger than reality. Ellison also, with sharpening a sales philosophy, rooted in a trip he had taken to Japan in the early 1970s. I was in Japan and I was talking to a Japanese business executive, and he told me, you know, the problem with America is that we just have no stomach for competition. In Japan, we believe our competitors are stealing the rice out of the mouths of our children. In Japan, we think anything less than 100% market share is not enough.

他以自己独特的方式针对政府机构和大型企业。我记得有一次他非常明确地告诉我，布鲁斯，我们如果不对客户撒谎就无法成功。不知为何，拉里告诉我们美国银行，我想他告诉我们有15个人，而实际上只有五个人。我不确定为什么美国银行会觉得你是五个人还是十五个人会有不同的看法，但拉里给了他一个比现实稍微大一点的数字。埃利森还在1970年代初的一次日本之行中加深了他的销售哲学。我当时在日本，和一个日本商务主管交谈时，他告诉我，你知道，美国的问题就是我们对竞争没有足够的胃口。在日本，我们相信竞争对手是从我们孩子的嘴里偷走米饭的人。在日本，我们认为只有不少于百分之百的市场份额才足够。

His take-no-prisoners approach became known as the Oracle Way. The Oracle Way in the early to mid-80s was just to win, almost by any means necessary. Larry's attitude is if you want to compete against me, then you better be prepared to be crushed, or don't compete against me.

他采取的毫不留情的方法被称为“牛顿方式”（Oracle Way）。在80年代初到中期，“牛顿方式”只是为了赢取胜利，几乎不计手段。拉里的态度是，如果你想与我竞争，那么你最好做好被击败的准备，不要与我竞争。

His product, the Oracle Database, took off like a jet fighter in one of his ads, and in 1986, Oracle went public. His 39% stake in the company was worth a stunning $93 million. The IPO was a huge hit, but was overshadowed the very next day by Microsoft's public offering, which made Bill Gates' stake worth a whopping $350 million.

他的产品，Oracle数据库，就像在他的广告中一样像一架喷气战斗机一样迅速走红，并且在1986年，Oracle上市了。他在该公司的39%股份价值惊人的9300万美元。首次公开募股非常成功，但次日被微软的公开募股所盖过，这使得比尔·盖茨的股份价值高达3.5亿美元。

In 1989, Ellison moved Oracle to this mammoth campus in Redwood Shores, California, which became known as the Emerald City, a reference to the Wizard of Oz, or as one newspaper described it, Larry Land, and everyone knew who was the wizard. When I ordered a Ferrari 348, and I was going to get the first 348 in California, Larry ordered one from somewhere on the East Coast and got it shipped in before I got mine. He didn't want to be the second one. He wanted to be the first one. His obsession to be first took its toll.

1989年，埃里森将Oracle迁至加利福尼亚州雷德伍德曲岸，建立了这个巨大的园区，被称为翡翠城。这个名称来自于《绿野仙踪》中的翡翠城，或者正如某家报纸所描述的那样，Larry Land，人们都知道谁是这个巫师。当我订购一辆法拉利348车时，我打算成为加州第一位拥有348车的人，而拉里却从东海岸某处订购了一辆，并在我之前把车运过来。他不想成为第二个人，他要成为第一个人。他对于第一的執著最终付出了代价。

Oracle hit a wall. These aggressive sales practices started to cause serious problems. Oracle's aggressive sales practices in the 80s turned the company into an accountant's nightmare. The Salesforce was so aggressive, so willing to close a deal, and there were so few business controls over the makeup of those deals, then we started having the problem of we certainly signed some bad contracts. They were also selling products that hadn't yet been created. Oracle was selling a lot of futures, so you were taking a lot of money and a lot of revenue in for future deliverables. Well then a question comes when you finally have those deliverables, now who do you sell them to? You already sold it to everybody. You sold it to them three years before you had it. It didn't help the company's prospects that their latest product was a dud. Oracle version 6 was riddled with bugs. Customers were frustrated and sales plummeted. It sometimes characterized as the near-death experience of Oracle in the early 90s, and it was. We weren't cutting fat. We were cutting in the muscle, and you might even say we were in a couple of cases, we were cutting a couple limbs off.

甲骨文（Oracle）遭到了挫折。这些激进的销售方式开始引发严重问题。80年代的甲骨文激进的销售方式使公司陷入了会计师的噩梦。销售团队非常激进，渴望完成交易，而且对于交易的安排几乎没有任何商业控制，因此我们开始遇到了签订一些糟糕合同的问题。他们还销售尚未创建的产品。甲骨文不断销售未来产品，因此你会为未来的交付获得很多资金和收入。但是当你最终拥有这些产品时，现在你要卖给谁呢？你已经把它卖给了每个人。你在获得这个产品之前的三年就把它卖了出去。而且，公司前景不妙的是，他们最新的产品非常失败。甲骨文6版本有很多漏洞。客户们感到沮丧，销售量直线下滑。有时候人们把这个时期描述为甲骨文公司在90年代初几乎破产的经历，事实也确实如此。我们当时并不是削减肥肉，而是挖去了肌肉，甚至可以说有几次我们截去了一些肢体。

With Oracle's stock price in free fall, so was Ellison's personal fortune. By November 1st, 1990, he had lost $790 million. His company was nearly a billion-dollar operation, and it was failing. Larry was trying to achieve this greatness. He was building towards that all the time, and now he was in a sense of laughingstock. It was devastating for him. We were all bunch of kids that grew up with the business, and we weren't kids anymore, and the business wasn't a little business anymore. It was a big business, and we had to replace virtually all of senior management, and it was a very painful process. He convinced well-known management and sales consultant Ray Lane to join the company. And what he brought was what I'd characterize as operational discipline, and a maturity around this is how a big business runs. It was chaotic, it was painful. Nobody wanted to go through that again, and so the culture was kind of reset.

随着Oracle股票价格的暴跌，埃里森的个人财富也受到了影响。到1990年11月1日，他已经损失了7.9亿美元。他的公司几乎是一个价值十亿美元的企业，但却正走向失败。拉里一直努力追求伟大。他一直在朝着这个目标努力，但现在他变得像个笑柄。这对他来说是毁灭性的。我们都是和这个事业一起成长的小孩，但现在我们不再是小孩了，这个事业也不再是小事了。它已经成长为一家大企业，我们不得不几乎替换掉所有高级管理人员，这是一个非常痛苦的过程。他说服了知名管理和销售顾问雷·莱恩加入公司。他带来的是运营纪律和对大企业运作方式的成熟认知。这一切是混乱的，也是痛苦的。没有人想再次经历那样的过程，所以企业文化有点被重置了。

But the company's real savior came in the form of a new product. Zach Nelson was Oracle's youngest marketing executive. Oracle 7 was a spectacular product. The future was incredibly bright, and I think everybody within the industry has been a great deal. And I think everybody within Oracle at that time certainly knew it and could sense it. It wasn't just incrementally better. It was orders of magnitude better. Ellison's company had dodged its near-death experience. In 1994, Oracle revenues passed the $2 billion mark, and his stock as a result was worth nearly $3 billion.

然而，公司的真正救星是一款新产品。扎克·尼尔森是甲骨文公司最年轻的市场总监。甲骨文7是一款非常出色的产品。未来前景非常光明，我认为在行业内每个人都感到非常兴奋。当时甲骨文内部的每个人都对此有很清楚的认识和感知。这不仅仅是渐进式的改进，而是巨大的飞跃。埃里森的公司成功躲过了几近死亡的经历。1994年，甲骨文的收入超过了20亿美元，因此他的股票价值近30亿美元。

For Ellison, that wasn't nearly enough. To become software's sole heavyweight, Ellison knew he had to pick a fight with the reigning champion, Bill Gates. He seemed to be personally disappointed he wasn't wealthier than Bill Gates. It's the scorecard. And if you weren't number one, if you weren't richest, you weren't on the top, you weren't the best. It was the scorecard, and he was losing. I think that Larry thought he was in a tremendous competition with Bill Gates, and maybe Gates didn't think so so much. Larry wanted to be recognized as the greatest innovator, salesman, evangelist in the world of software. And he had a steep battle going up against the guy who would put his software in every single personal computer practically in the world. Ellison was fixated on Gates. He would later admit publicly to hiring private detectives to dig up dirt on him.

对埃利森来说，这还远远不够。要成为软件界唯一的重量级人物，埃利森知道他必须与当今的冠军比尔·盖茨展开搏斗。他似乎对自己的财富不如比尔·盖茨感到个人失望。这是一种计分方式。如果你不是第一名，如果你不是最富有的，你就不是顶尖，你就不是最好的。这是计分方式，而他正在输。我认为拉里认为自己与比尔·盖茨有着巨大的竞争关系，而盖茨可能没有那么认为。拉里想要被公认为软件界最伟大的创新者、销售员和信仰传播者。他对抗了一个几乎将他的软件装进全世界每台个人电脑的人。埃利森对盖茨着迷。他后来公开承认雇佣私家侦探搜集盖茨的黑料。

Gates' new product, Windows 95, had the entire tech world buzzing, including Ellison himself, and this appearance on the Charlie Rose Show. This Windows 95 is an enormously complicated piece of software. And the idea of people are going to install this in their households and manage these things, their household, to me, is hilarious. And it's time for something that's easier to use. Well, this is clearly part of our strategy to throw in Microsoft. But the way to throw in Microsoft is not somebody that, you know, throw darts at Bill Gates and hate and envy Bill Gates. You have to think about products and create products that are better than their products that Microsoft is selling.

盖茨的新产品Windows 95引起了整个科技界的关注，包括埃利森本人，他在查理·罗斯秀中提到了这个产品。Windows 95是一款极其复杂的软件。而人们要在家中安装这个软件并管理各种事务，对我来说真是好笑。现在是时候推出更加易于使用的产品了。嗯，这显然是我们打败微软的策略的一部分。但是打败微软的方法不是让某个人扔飞镖瞄准比尔·盖茨并且痛恨和嫉妒他。你必须考虑产品并创造出比微软销售的产品更好的产品。

Ellison made a move into the consumer device market. He called it the Network Computer, or NC. He launched the Network Computer with great fanfare. The computers we currently make, personal computers, are rather expensive and very, very complex. So we've introduced this new class of computers for normal human beings. It's very low cost, very low weight. Now every person can use a computer because they're low cost and very easy to use. You can surf the net, you can do email on, and he said, and it's going to be $500. It's kind of an internet appliance, so to speak, no different than your toaster. I can remember having a discussion with him saying, you know, the internet makes it possible to imagine a world without Microsoft's operating system on every desktop. And that was really, you know, the birth of the NC.

埃里森进军消费电子设备市场。他称之为“网络计算机”或“NC”。他很有声望地推出了网络计算机。我们目前所制造的个人电脑非常昂贵，也非常复杂。因此，我们引入了这种新型的普通人使用的计算机。它的成本非常低，重量也非常轻。现在每个人都可以使用计算机，因为它们成本低，而且非常易于使用。你可以浏览网页，收发电子邮件，并且他说，它的售价将会是500美元。可以说它是一种互联网设备，和你的烤面包机没有什么区别。我还记得与他进行过一次讨论，说，你知道，互联网使得想象一个没有微软操作系统的世界成为可能。那真的是NC诞生的时刻。

Ellison went on a campaign to promote the power of his new baby on the web, while mocking the popular PC. I hate the PC with a passion. Put the stuff on the net. It's bits. Don't put bits in cardboard, cardboard in trucks, trucks to stores. Me, you know, me go to the store, you know, pick the stuff out. It's insane. I love the internet. But falling PC prices meant the NC was destined to fail. I don't think there was anything wrong with the idea. I actually just think it was premature. Five years later, it would have won the world, and the only difference is all the PC manufacturers, Dell, HP, everybody else, Gateway, what did they do? They created a $500 PC that surfs the web really well, and it does email really well. And that shut down Ellison's venture into the consumer market.

埃利森展开了一场宣传活动，推广他在网络上嘲笑流行个人电脑的新产品，我非常厌恶个人电脑。将东西放在网络上，那是比特。不要把比特放在纸板里，纸板放进卡车，卡车再运到商店。我，你知道，我去商店，你知道，挑选出东西。这太疯狂了。我喜爱互联网。然而，个人电脑的价格下降导致网络计算机注定会失败。我不认为这个想法有什么问题。实际上，我只是觉得时机不对。五年后，它将会征服全球，唯一的区别是所有个人电脑制造商，戴尔、惠普，还有其他所有公司，甲壳虫电脑，他们做了什么？他们制造了一台价值500美元的个人电脑，能够良好地上网和收发电子邮件。这使得埃利森进军消费市场的努力彻底失败了。

His NC was too far ahead of its time, but his vision of the internet was still right on target. Oracle's database became the underpinnings of all of these internet services that we take for granted today. It was Expedia, Amazon, eBay, go down the list of applications. All of those are storing all that information, previewing that information, delivering that information, doing those transactions through the Oracle database. People thought Larry was crazy. Now he's a genius. And it solved the biggest IT problem in history.

他的NC（网络计算机）超前了时代，但他对互联网的愿景仍然非常准确。甲骨文的数据库成为我们今天视为理所当然的所有互联网服务的基础。无论是Expedia、亚马逊、eBay还是其他应用程序，所有这些都在通过甲骨文数据库存储、预览、传递和完成交易。人们曾认为拉里是疯了，现在他被视为天才。这解决了史上最大的IT问题。

By 2000, Larry Ellison's company Oracle was among the elite tech companies in the world. But internal struggles would soon force out the company's president and chief operating officer, Ray Lane, who had risen to second in command and heir apparent. He described the culture at the company he left. It wasn't good enough for a salesman to make their quota. They had to make 200% of their quota. It was the top 10% get rewarded millions, and everybody else falls by the webs. They're weak soldiers. Shoot them. A departing lane said he didn't fit into Oracle's system, and that the only person making decisions at Oracle is Larry. Lots of people that transitioned in and out of Oracle got confused who was in charge, and that's a pretty volatile. That's like a galactic collision. Yeah, we're two stars hit, and it's a pretty violent explosion.

到了2000年，拉里·埃里森的公司甲骨文已成为世界上顶尖的科技公司之一。但内部的纷争很快将迫使公司总裁兼首席运营官雷·莱恩离开，他曾一度升至二把手和继任者的位置。他描述了离开的公司的文化。只满足销售指标是不够的，他们必须达到指标的200%。只有前10%的人能获得数百万奖励，其他人则无法得到认可，他们是软弱的士兵，被射击击落。莱恩离职时表示他无法适应甲骨文的体制，说甲骨文公司的决策只有拉里一个人做。很多人在进出甲骨文的过程中都对谁在掌控公司感到困惑，这种情况相当不稳定，就像银河系中两颗恒星碰撞，会引发相当剧烈的爆炸。

Oracle, the company, was on a roll, but was lagging behind in one key area. We're still fighting to be relevant in the applications world. We're the number two application provider in the world, and we're number two in ERP behind SAP. Boy, this number two is getting old. We're number two in CRM behind Sibel, but we're growing faster than SAP. And we're growing faster than Sibel, and we're determined to become number one in applications that's like we're number one in database.

甲骨文公司一度势头强劲，但在一个关键领域依然落后。我们仍在努力使自己在应用软件领域保持相关性。我们是全球第二大应用软件提供商，在ERP领域仅次于SAP。哎呀，这个第二名有些老套了。在CRM领域，我们仅次于Sibel，但我们的增长速度超过了SAP。我们的增长速度也超过了Sibel，并且我们决心在应用软件领域成为第一，就像我们在数据库领域一样。

To get to number one, Ellison needed to do something his company had long avoided, buying new technology through acquisitions. When he came to that conclusion, he opened his wallet and bet far bigger than anyone else did. In fact, he did it far faster than anyone else did. Ellison wanted to bundle new application software with Oracle's successful product line. In 2003, he targeted the company PeopleSoft in a hostile takeover attempt. The Department of Justice sued Oracle on antitrust grounds, charging the takeover would empower the company to illegally raise rates and impair innovation. After a year and a half long battle, the courts sided with Oracle. Ellison finally acquired PeopleSoft for $10.3 billion. It's very rare that someone gets sued by the government, and they actually win. You know, I mean, it's just another testament to this guy's tenacity. Most guys would have maybe walked away from that. Instead, Ellison stepped it up.

为了达到第一名，埃利森需要做一件他的公司长期以来都避免的事情，通过收购购买新技术。当他得出这个结论时，他打开了钱包，下注的规模远远超过其他人。事实上，他比其他人做得更快。埃利森希望将新的应用软件与Oracle成功的产品线捆绑在一起。2003年，他针对PeopleSoft公司发起了一次敌意收购尝试。美国司法部以反垄断为由对Oracle提起诉讼，指控该收购将使该公司非法提高价格并破坏创新。经过一年半的斗争，法院支持了Oracle的一方。埃利森最终以103亿美元收购了PeopleSoft。很少有人会被政府起诉，并赢得胜诉。你知道，我是说，这再次证明了这个人的毅力。大多数人可能会从中退缩，但埃利森却加大了力度。

Over the next five years, he would spend close to $34 billion, acquiring 52 companies. Heather Bellini is Senior Managing Director of the Technology Research Team at International Strategy and Investment Group. She has covered Oracle since 2003. He started looking out and seeing how the landscape was changing and how the carnage that was done to some of his competitors was going to give him an opportunity to go make some acquisitions and buy some technology where he was behind. And he really was the one that started the whole M&A trend within the technology industry.

在接下来的五年里，他将花费近340亿美元收购52家公司。希瑟·贝利尼（Heather Bellini）是国际战略与投资集团（International Strategy and Investment Group）的科技研究团队的高级董事总经理。自2003年以来，她一直关注甲骨文公司（Oracle）。他开始观察并了解行业的变化，以及竞争对手所遭受的惨痛教训将为他提供一些机会，通过收购和购买一些他落后的技术。他确实是启动科技行业整个并购潮的人。

Ellison's appetite for acquisitions accelerated in 2009 with his $7.4 billion trophy purchase of the prominent hardware company Sun Microsystems. But in 2010, his eyes were on another trophy, a decade-long $400 million obsession. BMW Oracle Racing was launched in 2000 for Ellison's run at the Americas Cup. It may be the oldest active prize in international sport, but what Ellison created was entirely new. The boat is a trimaran. It often appears to be nearly flying with only one of its three holes actually in contact with the water. The oceans have never seen anything like it.

埃里森对收购的热衷在2009年加速，他以74亿美元的天价收购了重要的硬件公司Sun Microsystems。但在2010年，他的目光转向了另一个重要目标，这是一项持续十年的、价值4亿美元的执念。宝马甲骨文赛艇队在2000年由埃里森创立，用于参加美洲杯比赛。这可能是国际体育竞赛中最古老而活跃的奖项，但埃里森所创造的是全新的。赛艇是一艘高速船。它常常看起来几乎在飞行，只有三个船身中的一个与水接触。海洋从未见过这样的船。

There is absolutely no doubt that he hates to lose. There is no doubt about it all. Grant Dalton has competed against Ellison on the Americas Cup circuit. My recollection in racing against him and we will race against him in the future is this is a man that's very determined to work. On Valentine's Day 2010, Ellison brought the Americas Cup back to the United States for the first time in 15 years. He celebrated with his now ex-wife, romance novelist Melanie Kraft. It was his fourth marriage.

毫无疑问，他讨厌失败。毫无疑问，格兰特·道尔顿曾在美洲杯赛事中与埃里森竞争过。我记得与他比赛，而且我们将来还将与他竞争，这是一个非常有决心工作的人。2010年情人节，埃里森将美洲杯带回了美国，这是15年来的首次。他与当时的妻子、浪漫小说家梅兰妮·克拉夫特一起庆祝。那是他的第四次婚姻。

The old samurai warrior re-emerged when his friend Mark Hurd resigned as CEO at Hewlett Packard amid allegations of sexual harassment and expense account irregularities. Ellison was outraged. He attacked the HP Board of Directors. He sent a quote to HP Board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs many years ago. Exactly one month later, Ellison stunned the business world when he turned around and hired the ousted executive.

当他的朋友马克·赫德（Mark Hurd）因性骚扰指控和报销款项不当而辞去惠普（Hewlett Packard）首席执行官职位时，这位老侍卫重新出现了。埃利森（Ellison）对此感到愤怒。他抨击了惠普董事会。他向惠普董事会发出了一句话：“这是自多年前苹果董事会开除史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）以来最糟糕的人事决策。”正好一个月之后，埃利森令商业界震惊的一幕上演了，他突然翻了个面，雇佣了被解雇的高管。

The Silicon Valley soap opera continued when HP named Leo Appetaker as its chief executive. His former company SAP is Oracle's biggest rival in business software. SAP and Oracle had been locked in a nasty three-year copyright infringement case that ended in November 2010. SAP, the German software firm, was ordered to pay Oracle $1.3 billion. It was the biggest settlement ever for software piracy. Larry Ellison's brawl had drawn new blood on the information technology battlefield. And as always, he is more determined than ever to win.

硅谷肥皂剧在惠普任命了Leo Appetaker为首席执行官时继续进行。他的前公司SAP是甲骨文在商业软件领域的最大竞争对手。SAP和甲骨文曾陷入一起长达三年的讨厌的版权侵权案中，该案于2010年11月结束。这家德国软件公司SAP被判赔偿甲骨文13亿美元，这是有史以来最大的软件盗版和解金额。拉里·埃里森的斗争为信息技术战场注入了新鲜血液。而且像往常一样，他比以往任何时候都更加决心要赢得胜利。

Larry Ellison is pretty similar to the New York Yankees. They're the team you love to hate. And as a competitor to Larry Ellison, I'm sure he's the person that people love to hate just given how successful he's been. Well, most visionaries you think are sort of just talking off their hat and saying, oh, this is how the world can be. You know, Larry sees how the world can be, and then he actually tries to make it that. He started with a $1,200 stake in a little company, and by sheer force of will and persuasion, he built it into one of the giant software companies of the world.

拉里·埃里森很像纽约扬基队，他们是你喜欢讨厌的团队。作为对手，我相信作为一位非常成功的人，人们一定喜欢讨厌他。通常，你认为大多数有远见的人只是在说着空话，说这个世界可以如何如何。然而，拉里看到了这个世界可以变成怎样，并且他实际上努力去实现了这一点。他以1200美元的投资开始了一家小公司，凭借自己的意志和说服力，将它发展成世界上一家巨型软件公司。