V: Your friend Larry Ellison is trying to generate more personal wealth than his arch rival Bill Gates <G>....FYI...
<<Ellison Rides Oracle Earnings to the Top
By Duncan Martell Mar 17 8:58pm ET
PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - The stock market is at last seeing Oracle Corp. (ORCL.O) like the company's brash chairman and founder Larry Ellison sees it -- as a basic need for anybody doing business on the Internet, just like Microsoft was for the desktop.
And if Oracle stays on its recent pace, Ellison, the inveterate Microsoft-basher, could replace his nemesis Bill Gates as the world's richest man and slay a few ghosts at the same time.
``The whole Oracle strategy is really very simple. It's producing for the Internet what Microsoft did with Office when they said 'here are all the pieces in a single box,' Ellison said in an interview on Tuesday in one of Oracle's six, sleek, black oval office buildings at its headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif.
If the stock price is any indication -- the shares have more than quintupled in the last year -- investors seem to believe it could happen.
Just as Microsoft Corp. established a monopoly with its Windows operating system and then bundled together office productivity software into MS Office, Oracle wants its database and business management software to become the de-facto standard for e-business in the digital age.
``We're trying to do that on a much grander scale,' he said.
'ELVIS'
Once dubbed ``Elvis' by Oracle-ites for his rare office sightings, Ellison has been accused of periods of lax attention to the company he founded in 1977 after moving from his native Chicago. He discounts much of this as myth, saying that of all his vacations, only one has lasted an entire month. But it's clear he's now more engaged at Oracle than ever. And he's back on top as a visionary, and not necessarily software's bad boy-- the arrogant, imperious, adventuring (he owns and flies his own disarmed fighter jet) man he's been accused of being, one wont to make grandiose predictions that don't always come to pass.
``Larry's got a tremendous amount of credibility in the market right now,' said analyst Chris Shilakes at Merrill Lynch & Co. ``If you're looking for a one-stop shop all the way through to the database, to the applications and out through the B2B exchange, Oracle is the solution out there right now.'
Oracle market's capitalization, at $240 billion, recently topped the $204 billion of competitor International Business Machines Corp. (IBM.N), which itself coined the term e-business. Ellison's 24 percent stake in Oracle (ORCL.O) is worth about $57.5 billion and Bill Gates' stake in Microsoft is worth $80 billion.
MICROSOFT IN THE REAR-VIEW MIRROR
Ellison's now aiming at software giant Microsoft, the most highly valued company in the world. ``I think it's possible to pass them in market capitalization this calendar year.'
That in itself would be staggering, analysts said, as a clear sign of the shift from the world of the PC to a world of powerful computer servers and hundreds of millions of information appliances all connected to the Internet. It also makes Ellison heir apparent to title of richest man in the world now held by Bill Gates, Microsoft's Chairman.
The market value of Microsoft, founded two years before Oracle in 1975, now stands at about $517 billion, making it the most valuable company in the world. Cisco, the largest maker of gear that powers the Internet, ranks second at $492 billion.
Ellison, known to fret publicly and repeatedly about Microsoft's extraordinary power, now finds himself in a similar position as Intel, IBM and Microsoft -- the high-tech elite.
``Oracle has never had that kind of brand before,' Oracle said. That belonged to an Intel or a Microsoft or an IBM. Maybe you won't grant that we have it yet, but we're getting very close to that very heady territory where we're clearly the leader in Internet software and everybody knows it.'
Strong financial results have helped, too.
On Tuesday, Oracle reported third-quarter results that steamrolled analyst forecasts to produce an 80-percent gain in profits. Sales rose 18 percent to $2.45 billion.
``Oracle had none of the market 15 years ago and now it's chewing up billions of (dollars in) revenue in database sales,' said BancofAmerica Securities analyst Bob Austrian. ``And they're finally entering the applications market with conviction but they've got a ways to go still.'
BRAVADO
Of course, not everyone thinks Oracle is the one-stop shop it claims to be. ``There's a lot of bravado going on and a lot of self-proclaimed leadership going on at Oracle,' said Janet Perna, who runs IBM's database business.
Analysts and even Ellison note there will be no one huge winner -- either in the Internet infrastructure market or in B2B or in the B2C categories. Just as in other industries, each will settle out and have two or three, perhaps a couple more.
``In terms of lasting value on a lot of these companies, their technology is very, very thin and I don't think they have the ability to compete long term,' Ellison said.'
In the end, perhaps why Ellison chooses to stick around Oracle after 23 years and nearly $60 billion later is his nearly maniacal conviction -- not to mention considerable confidence -- that Oracle has what it takes to lead in Internet-enabled business.
``It's like being in the railroad business in the 1860s. Forgive the cliche, but we're going through a second Industrial Revolution,' Ellison said. ``And driving Oracle is more fun than driving Sayonara, my racing sailboat.'>>
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