Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle

asked by bigchad on November 23, 2006 6:50 AM

Softwar is a biography of Larry Ellison and his company, Oracle. As such, it's simultaneously a portrait of a clever and driven man, a case study of a successful software development company, and a tableau of the commercial software industry from its beginnings, through the dot-com craze, and into the present era. Matthew Symonds, who began this project while working as the editor of the excellent technology section of the Economist, has done a great job with all three elements of his project, thanks in no small part to the tremendous access he was given and to his close collaboration with Ellison.

Collaboration is very nearly the right word, as Ellison reviewed Symonds' manuscript before publication and, while he did not alter it, he did make a large number of comments, which appear in the book as footnotes. As Symonds is a good journalist who attributes most of his material, Ellison is able to take issue immediately with statements other people make about him and his company. The overall effect is hypertextual, and represents an important new biographical technique that other writers should imitate. Softwar succeeds because Ellison has a fantastically interesting life, tremendous experience, and carefully considered opinions, and because Symonds communicates them with clarity and style. --David Wall

Topics covered: The life, times, acquaintances, tastes, toys, and opinions of Larry Ellison, the database entrepreneur and CEO of Oracle Corporation.

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Reviews

I have to admit that this book really caught me. It isn't light reading, and it isn't a beacon of objectivity, but the book is packed with action, and very little of it is filler. Having Ellison comment on this is also very interesting read. The book is written the clarity, even if lot of it is just quoting people the author has interviewed, but it does seem like he was asking the right questions and his interviewees did not hesitate to answer candidly.

The book doesn't actually talk much about Oracle's database, but is more focused on Ellison's new integrated suite vision. While it certainly is interesting, I believe Oracle is still very much a database company so the database part is conspicuously over-downplayed/ignored. And the book does tend to go back and forth in time quite a bit.

But the book is worth every minute. Ellison's management practice isn't textbook materials, but in this case, it does seem to work.

reviewed by squeege on November 25, 2006 9:12 PM

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True to its subtitle Softwar does indeed deliver an 'intimate portrait' of billionaire business leader Larry Ellison. Unfortunately, although the book is enthralling and features an incredibly interesting format including written responses by Ellison to points raised by Symonds, it falls short in two important areas for biographies.

Firstly, Symonds is not objective - he clearly worked very closely with Ellison and certainly paints a more rosy picture of the complicated man than a more impartial observer may. Secondly, the structure of the book is lacking. The first section of the book (although it is not actually divided as a section) covers Ellison's business life chronoligically and perhaps in too detailed a manner to always remain interesting (there's an alphabet soup of executive names that are never heard from again). Then what I would consider the second section of the book jumps around from business to personal ventures and lacks a real 'feeling of time'. A more traditionally fully integrated narrative of the personal and business sides to Ellison's life would perhaps have been superior since it's difficult to gage how much pressures in one area of Ellison's life are affecting the other.

Even with its flaws, Software is well written and comes as close to being autobiographical as a non-autobiography can. The subject himself is certainly interesting enough to warrant the 500 pages, and the unique response format is refreshing.

reviewed by anton584 on November 29, 2006 1:20 AM

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