He's had a bit of a change of heart about Cloud Computing since 2003, eh?
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.”
Repost but Larry Ellison, 2005 interview with SF Chronicle
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."
Hard to see how BEA & Sun can be considered losers (at least when it comes to tech) - for better or worse they are some of the most popular enterprise technologies in use, alongside Oracle.
Larry Ellison always tries this scare tactics when the economy is bad, of course he needs to paint that big businesses are the only way to go. However we seeing that gigantic j2ee solutions with Oracle being to expensive and a move to a lot of cheaper OSS solutions like php, rails and django.
There's some truth to what he's saying, in that the most interesting innovation is probably going to happen beyond the web- clean tech, biotech, and life sciences.
Since that interview, a lot of interesting developments have happened on the web, e.g. proliferation of VoIP, mobile dev, microblogging and real-time search.
It does seem like the fields you mention are ripe for innovation, though. I wonder if CS will be playing a significant auxiliary role.
Okay,I see different things. He said big companies will win and small ones will fail, and he thinks that the future is in "molecular biology", Wifi and other advanced technologies, which I don't agree with.
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 railroad industry, which he used for comparison, is not apples to apples. Reason: There was no open source, cloud computing, etc. disruptive equivalents in the railroad industry.
On the other hand he's successfully made a boatload of money for investors.
18 comments
[ 6.5 ms ] story [ 67.5 ms ] threadhttp://www.timeanddate.com/date/durationresult.html?m1=8&...
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.”
Maybe he doesn't get it, because services like Heroku are much more than clustering.
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/...
Larry's now the guy putting the losers together.
It does seem like the fields you mention are ripe for innovation, though. I wonder if CS will be playing a significant auxiliary role.
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.
M$ has good research going on. The question is whether it can be productized.
On the other hand he's successfully made a boatload of money for investors.