Larry Ellison: The Old Valley Is History (2003)

The entire interview is interesting for Larry Ellison predicting the future and then implementing it.

"Q: Does that lead to a consolidation period?

A: The industry is maturing. It is going to consolidate. That's exactly what happened to every other industry. I didn't invent the idea of consolidation. What happens during a period of consolidation is (the company in) second place can suddenly move and become the winner.

One of the interesting things is (that) when you look at when the automobile industry, the clear winner in the early phase of the automobile industry was Henry Ford. Ford was the No. 1 car company in the world by far. Then a guy by the name of Alfred Sloan decided to get all of the good losers together -- Chevrolet and Buick and all those guys -- and built General Motors. Then General Motors passed Ford during the consolidation phase in the automobile industry.

So during the entrepreneurial growth phase, Ford won. During the consolidation phase, Ford lost and found itself in second place.

Q: So you don't want to be Henry Ford.

A: It's too late for anyone to be Henry Ford. That phase is over. We did pretty well in the database business. We have the No. 1 database in the world, and I'll argue that, at the dawn of the information age, that's not a bad position to have."

2003 - Peoplesoft acquires JD Edwards

January 2005 - Peoplesoft acquisition

January 2006 - Siebel acquisition

January 2008 - BEA acquisition

January 2010 - Sun acquisition

(via Wikipedia)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/08/...

The future of the Internet and technology? I see that companies like Envato will win in the long run. MicroStock sites like Themeforest, code canyon and Active Den. Every man and his dog will purchase a computer, install some software and build something tiny and useful. People will build script, themes, plug-ins... They'll make enough money from it to live and some will become rich.

The ones that don't understand well what it is and the bad developers will get jobs at the 'big companies'. The smart will start small startups that either sells for millions or make 10 times a salary they can get from working a 9-5 job.

The future is in the hand of the smart. Sites like Hacker News and companies like Ycombinator will help them. I'm from a third world country, I know programming before I knew the Internet, but I wasn't able to use my full potential before sites like HN and blogs, forums, communities existed.

They completely changed my mind, made me another person. From someone that loves programming and build software to someone that understand the market and is able to build something that can makes him many and avoid working for a company with a stupid boss.

The future is in Freelancing, at least for me.

2003: "But the thing I'm most interested in is software as a service. That idea that every customer who wants to do accounting on computers, or every customer who wants to do inventory, or manufacturing, has to figure out what computer to buy, what operating system to buy, what Cisco router and switch to buy, what database to buy, is just nonsense.

Companies should be experts in their business, and computing should be available on the Net as a service. So more and more, our business is changing from selling our applications to our customers to: We buy the computers, we run the applications, and you use it. We'll be the experts. And you just pay us a monthly fee. That really is utility computing."

2009: "Cloud’s water vapor….Cloud computing is not only the future of computing, it is the present and the entire past of computing.

…Salesforce.com has been around for a decade. And so has NetSuite…and people are saying, “Well, that’s cloud computing.” Google is cloud computing. Everyone is cloud computing….Everything is in the cloud now….It’s this nonsense.

…But it’s not water vapor. All it is is a computer attached to a network. What are you talking about? I mean, what do you think Google runs on?…Water vapor? It’s databases and operating systems and memory and microprocessors and the Internet!

…And the VCs, I love the VCs. [They ask their start-ups] “Oh…is that cloud?” [And the start-ups go] “Oh! Oh! Microsoft Word! Change ‘Internet’ to ‘cloud’! Mass change. Give it back to these nitwits on Sand Hill Road.”

…What do you mean by “cloud computing”?…All the cloud is is computers on a network.

Our industry is so bizarre. They just change a term and they think they’ve invented technology….You can’t just come up with a [slogan] like “Let’s call that ‘cloud.” [But] it sure beats innovation.”

On the other hand he's successfully made a boatload of money for investors.

M$ has good research going on. The question is whether it can be productized.