WEBVTT - The Story of Oracle: Part One 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.720 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.680 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:19.480 how Stuff Works and I love all things tech. And 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:23.760 today we're gonna talk about the Oracle story. Oracles a big, 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:27.440 big company, and this is inspired by my recent trip 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:30.800 to Sweet World eighteen. I flew out to Las Vegas, 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:34.480 Nevada and was part of that conference. I am back 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:37.159 in the Atlanta studio as I record this, So if 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:39.800 you're listening to this and you're thinking us sounds like 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:43.800 the normal type of episode, that's why. Also I want 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:46.319 to let you guys know we're going to step up 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:49.720 the production schedule for Tech Stuff, so you're gonna start 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:53.720 getting new episodes pretty much on a daily basis, at 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:57.760 least four new episodes a week and a rerun on Saturday's, 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:01.600 maybe more than that, depending up on how our scheduling goes. 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:05.000 But we're experimenting with a new format to see how 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:06.960 well it works, and I'm curious to hear what you 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:09.600 guys think about it. But I'm really excited about this 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:11.200 because it means I get to do the thing I 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:14.080 love to do more often, which is awesome. All right, 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:17.200 let's talk about Oracle. It's a huge name in the 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:21.759 tech space. It's a software company that frequently ranks right 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:25.679 behind Microsoft in the largest of such companies in the world. 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:29.040 So in the world of software, Microsoft's number one and 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:32.080 Oracles right behind it number two. And while most of 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:35.959 Oracles products aren't the kind the average person accesses on 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:39.039 a regular basis. You know, you think of Microsoft and 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:41.000 you think of things like Windows, and you think of 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:45.840 their suite of productivity software, things like Word and Excel. 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:51.240 Oracles business isn't really about the average customer, like the 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:54.320 average person is being a customer. Instead, it tends to 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:59.440 be a business that sells products to other businesses. Um. 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:03.320 It's history and its founders have very interesting stories. So 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:07.440 to begin with, let's start with the most famous of 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:13.160 oracles co founders, a man who has an incredible reputation 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:19.280 for being uh flamboyant, and he speaks his mind and 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:23.080 he can be incendiary in some cases. We're talking about 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:28.200 Larry Ellison. Now, Ellison's story is the stuff of legend 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:30.880 or maybe a fairy tale in some ways, because he 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:35.120 rose from poverty to become one of the richest people 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:40.680 in the world, and he has a reputation for being headstrong, unconventional, 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:44.560 and at times in his life living like a rock star. 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:49.240 Biography about his life has the title The Difference between 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:52.200 God and Larry Ellison, which is a setup to the 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:56.560 punchline God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison. I could do 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:00.160 a full episode just on him and his anti but 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:03.080 I'm gonna try and limit that a little bit and 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:07.400 focus mostly on his behavior directly tied to Oracle, though 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:10.880 expect some of Ellison's actions to creep in now and 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:13.880 again because they had an impact on the company that 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:17.160 he co founded. He was born in nineteen forty four 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:22.720 to nineteen year old Florence Spellman. Spellman was unwed and 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:27.079 Ellison never met his biological father. His mother handed Ellison 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:32.480 over to her sister, Lillian and her sister's husband, Louis 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:38.320 Louis Ellison. Larry's aunt and uncle adopted him, and according 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:41.720 to Ellison, the family took their last name from Ellis 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:47.840 Island after the father or the his uncle really Louis 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:53.600 or Louis after his family immigrated to America from Eastern Europe. Now, 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:57.600 according to Ellison himself, his childhood was pretty rough. His 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:03.280 adopted father undermined Ellison's self worth and confidence. Apparently, he 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:06.480 would say frequently that Larry Ellison was good for nothing. 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:11.280 Ellison had trouble in school. He was described as intelligent, 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.320 but he didn't do well with authority figures. He wasn't 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:16.479 really crazy about being told what to do and win. 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:21.039 But he was very smart, and when he graduated high school, 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.600 he first enrolled in the University of Illinois, but after 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:27.520 a while he dropped out, and then he enrolled in 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:31.120 the University of Chicago, but after a while he dropped 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:34.120 out of that as well, and at least the first one. 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:37.400 He dropped out for good reason and that his adopted 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:41.279 mother had passed away and he wanted to leave school 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.320 to be back with his his family and to pay 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:47.760 his respects. He made the decision in the mid nineteen 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:51.520 sixties to head to California and try to make a 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:54.200 living out there, and at first he did odd jobs. 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:57.000 He also bought a book on programming and began to 0:04:57.040 --> 0:04:59.839 teach himself how to do it. According to an account 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:02.960 he gave to the Smithsonian, he never once took a 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:06.760 class in computer programming. He was completely self taught and 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:10.440 in nineteen seventy three got hired on at the Ampex Corporation. 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:14.440 Ampex is an electronics company. It started out making electric 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:18.760 motors and generators in the nineteen forties. By the nineteen seventies, 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:21.760 when Ellison had joined, the company had diversified and started 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:26.400 making various types of recorders like magnetic tape recorders such 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:29.599 as eight track or sixteen or twenty four track recorders. 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:33.560 Larry Ellison's supervisor at Ampex was a guy named Robert 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:38.440 Bob Nimrod Minor. Bob Minor was a first generation American 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.960 born in nineteen forty one. His parents came from Iran 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:45.080 to live in the US in the nineteen twenties. Minor 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:48.400 had attended the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:52.680 graduated with a degree in mathematics. Bob Minor had a 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:55.680 deep understanding of computers and would end up being the 0:05:55.760 --> 0:06:00.440 lead engineer for Oracle during those early days. The third 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:04.760 co founder of Oracle was another Ampex employee named Ed Oates. 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:07.919 He was born in nineteen forty six and graduated with 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:11.160 a BA in mathematics from San Jose University in nineteen 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:15.120 sixty eight. Together with Minor and Ellison, he would found 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:19.160 what would become Oracle. Now, alright, I should say that 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:21.480 at the very beginning here that there are a lot 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:27.080 of conflicting reports about the actual order of events that 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:31.479 I'm going to describe next. But based upon my research, 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:36.479 this is how I think things unfolded. Now. I say think, 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:40.359 because again, if you research this stuff, you're gonna find 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:44.000 a lot of different versions of this story. Some suggest 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:48.760 that Ellison joined the fledgling company a few months after 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.520 Oates and Minor founded it. Others say that Ellison was 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:57.000 the central role of founder in this company. I think 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:00.880 the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. First, Ellison 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:04.600 left Ampex in nineteen seventy six and joined another company 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:08.719 called Precision Instruments to take the position of vice president 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.320 of research and development over at Ampex. Bob Minor and 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:15.120 Ed Oates decided they wanted to form their own business, 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:19.480 so they left Ampex and they create They contacted Ellison. 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:22.600 They asked him if maybe he wanted to join their venture, 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.480 and Ellison agreed. So while he had joined Precision Instruments, 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:28.560 he was not there for very long. He left to 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:32.320 go and found this company and the brand new company 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:38.680 was not called Oracle, at least not yet. Instead, this 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:44.000 brand new company was called Software Development Laboratories or s 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:48.120 d L, and their business model was to become software 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:52.480 engineers for hire, so companies would contract with them to 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:55.760 build out software packages that those companies needed on a 0:07:55.840 --> 0:07:59.400 per job basis. They would be contract workers. You need 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:02.840 a platform of programs developed, call us, we'll do it. 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:07.800 They rented out a an office out of Santa Clara, California, 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:11.080 with nine square feet of office space and all they 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:15.120 needed at that point, we're customers. So while they started 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:18.720 looking for business, ed Oates was looking around and he 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:21.000 came across a paper that was written back in n 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:27.080 seventy by a computer scientist in the UK named Edgar F. Cod. 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:31.239 Cod proposed using a model for information that would allow 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:36.160 a database to organize data by its relationship with other data. 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:39.480 And you would do this by organizing all the information 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:43.680 into tables with columns and rows, and each row would 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:48.440 have a unique identifier attached to it, and the rows 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:53.320 will be called records or sometimes called tuples. Columns would 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:57.560 represent attributes, so you would have a column that describes 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:01.400 some sort of feature that could apply to the various 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.920 records the various rows in this table, and each column 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:07.520 would be a different feature. So let's say that you're 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:12.000 talking about a physical product. One column might indicate the 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:15.760 location where that physical product is. Another column might be 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:20.120 the price of that product, or another one might be 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:23.720 the color of that product or whatever that might be. 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:25.880 And using this kind of approach, you could build a 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:28.480 really useful database that could allow you to look at 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:33.040 data in many different ways by structuring queries. So let 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:36.720 me give you a simple example so that I can, 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:40.680 you know, explain what this means. Let's say that you 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:44.800 are a huge roller skate tycoon, which means you you 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:49.200 sell roller skates and you're incredibly successful, not that you 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:52.840 sell really big roller skates or that you are in 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:57.400 fact a giant who wears roller skates. Now, in your business, 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:00.280 you decide you want to see which lines of roller 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:03.559 skates are selling best in your stores in San Francisco. 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:07.040 So you run a query and you've got this big 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:09.640 table of data and you're saying, well, I want to 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:13.480 see the skates that are being sold in our San 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:17.679 Francisco stores. I want them ranked by most popular to 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:20.080 least popular, and then I can get a quick look 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:22.480 at my business and see which ones are doing well. 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:24.680 Maybe I need to order more of those, Maybe I 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:27.360 need to order fewer of the models that are not 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:30.480 doing really well. And so you look at this information 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:33.280 and you see that the skates that have really good 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:36.240 breaks on them are the ones they're doing really well, 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:39.400 which makes sense in San Francisco, because otherwise you're just 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:44.120 gonna take off down that hill, hurtling to your destiny 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:47.920 until you just end up in the middle of the 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:51.160 Pacific Ocean, so you would never be seen again. It 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:53.240 makes sense that the roller skates would break, so the 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:55.360 ones that are doing really well. Now this is not 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:59.040 revolutionary these days, right. We are used to being able 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:03.480 to create ables in this way where we can create 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:07.960 different categories of features and then we can sort by that, 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:11.280 or we can filter by that, so that we're only 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:15.080 looking at the data that actually interests us, and everything 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:19.000 else gets hidden away so that it's not distracting. That's 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.000 not revolutionary today, But back then it was. This relational 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:26.520 database idea was a huge, huge notion, and at that point, 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:32.480 while cod was suggesting this particular model of handling information, 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:36.160 no one had yet found a way to implement it. 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.680 In an elegant way. All the different attempts were still 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:42.840 very much in the early phases. But Oates, having read 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:46.400 this paper, thought this sounds really really interesting to me. 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:48.440 I think that we can make a business out of 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:51.800 this because other businesses are going to want to be 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:55.240 able to sort their data in various ways. So if 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:58.320 we can figure out a way to build a software 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:02.280 platform where we can create eate database software for these companies, 0:12:02.880 --> 0:12:07.400 that might be our entry point into the market. Maybe 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:09.920 that's how we actually start making our money. So the 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:15.839 databases in commercial use became known as relational database management systems, 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:19.280 also known as r D B M s S S so 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:24.160 are for relational dB for database, M for management, and 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:29.760 S for systems. And that would really transform data analysis. 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:32.920 But that's only part of the picture. So another part 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:37.320 was thanks to the computer scientists over at IBM. There 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:40.319 was a guy named Donald D. Chamberlain and another one 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:44.040 named Raymond F. Boyce. They had also read Cod's paper, 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:47.240 and they decided to create a type of programming language 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:51.720 that could manifest those ideas make them actually work. They 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:54.920 wanted to create a programming language that would end up 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:57.600 allowing you to create these kind of relational databases. So 0:12:57.640 --> 0:12:59.440 they set to work and doing it, and there first 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:03.480 such a town was originally called Square, but Square proved 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:06.319 to be pretty clunky and inelegant. It had a lot 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:08.360 of limitations to it, so they decided to go back 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:11.559 to the drawing board and try again. Their second effort 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:17.000 they called sequel s q L, or sometimes they actually 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:20.319 would spell it out s e q L, and s 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:24.640 q L stands for structured Query Language. S e q 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:28.560 L was supposed to be structured English query language, and uh, 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:30.719 it was kind of a cheeky reference to also being 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:33.120 the second attempt to create such a language to make 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:38.200 these r D B M s is. So the sequel 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:42.160 language would in fact lend itself well to building this 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:46.560 kind of database. Now what came next, Well, I'll tell you, 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:50.960 but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:01.480 All Right, So we have this concept of relational databases 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:05.280 that cod had proposed. We've got the sequel language that 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:09.440 was developed by the scientists over at IBM, and the 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:12.920 three co founders decided they didn't want to challenge IBM 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:18.280 directly by creating database systems for mainframe computers. IBMS clients 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:22.840 tended to be really big companies, like really big ones, 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:27.560 and they were mostly using these large mainframe computer systems 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:31.880 that trace their origins back to the nineteen fifties. So instead, 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:34.680 the co founder said, what we should do is build 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:38.920 out a database system that can work on many computers. 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:42.400 Many computers are still pretty big, right they're not. They're 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:44.720 bigger than what a personal computer would have been. Like, 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:47.880 especially the many computers back in the nineteen seventies. They 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:52.000 were still large. Uh, they were less expensive than mainframes, 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:54.800 but they were also less powerful and they were more 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:57.360 frequently used by mid sized companies. It just made more 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:00.560 sense to go with many computers than may frames. Now, 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:03.880 the personal computers, those we would call micro computers, they're 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.760 even a size smaller. So the co founder said, well, 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:10.000 IBM is probably not going to go for that market. 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:14.880 They tend to concentrate on large companies, not mid sized companies. 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:19.320 So if we tailor a business for mid size companies, 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:23.400 there's probably a lot of opportunity there, and we don't 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:27.480 have to worry about IBM wanting to compete directly against 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:31.320 us or acquire us. We can do business our way. 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:34.160 And so ed Oates convinced his partners that building out 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:37.240 databases using the sequel language was the way to go, 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:40.160 and so the team got to work building their very 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:45.160 first software product, which was called Oracle. But there's a 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:47.880 bit more to it than that, because it was called 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:52.280 Oracle for specific reasons. So the software gots name from 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:56.160 a project that was being run by the first customer 0:15:56.480 --> 0:16:01.840 SDL ever had. Remember STL stood for Software Element Laboratories. Well, 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:08.200 that customer was the little US agency called the c 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:13.080 i A, that is, the Central Intelligence Agency. That was 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:17.480 the first s d L customer, and the CIA had 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:21.320 a special project they were looking to complete called Oracle. 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:26.120 So what was the project about? Why did they need 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:32.200 a relational database? Well, who's to say it's classified? It's 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:35.080 probably cloak and dagger stuff. I do not have the 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:37.960 proper clearance to find out what exactly was going on. 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:41.920 It was all redacted. But STL took the project and 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:44.280 they had two years to complete the work and create 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:47.400 a relational database for the c i A. Bob Minor 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:50.400 did most of the work and creating the architecture for 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:53.000 the database, and they were able to turn in their 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:56.000 project a year ahead of schedule. They spent the following 0:16:56.080 --> 0:16:59.960 year adapting this database approach so that they could create 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:03.440 a commercial product that they could sell to other companies. 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:06.520 So essentially, they said, well, we did this for the CIA, 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:09.000 let's just adapt it so that we can sell it 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:13.240 to anyone, really, any organization or a company that's out there. 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:17.120 So they decided to stick with the name the project 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.439 name the CIA project, which was called Oracle, and use 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:24.240 that to name their product, their software, their database software 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:28.000 thus became known as Oracle. By the way, there is 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:32.600 an allegation out there that Oracle actually started out as 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:36.200 a Russian software product that the c i A lifted 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:41.320 as in stall, and then handed over to SDL. I've 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:46.000 seen no confirmation of that allegation anywhere, and I'm inclined 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:49.800 to consider it outright false, as it really serves as 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:52.600 a huge injustice to the people like Bob Minor who 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:55.680 actually worked really hard to build out this database software. 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:58.160 But I just wanted to acknowledge the fact that there 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:00.359 is a rumor out there. I just don't think it 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:04.639 has any real credence. Also, the version that Ellison, Bob 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:09.679 Minor and Oates made commercially available wasn't just Oracle. It 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:15.119 was actually called Oracle Version two. So why was the 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:18.320 first version ever offered in the consumer market, known as 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:23.000 Version two. Well, it's because Larry Ellison thought no company 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:26.680 or organization would want to buy Version one of any 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:30.520 kind of software platform. They would worry about it being unproven, 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:32.960 and so he said, well, why don't we just call 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:37.680 this version two? Will bypass the problem. It was still 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.840 the first version of the Oracle software, it just had 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:44.360 the name Version two, which is sort of like forming 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:48.040 a brand new musical band and then calling your first 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:53.600 album your greatest Hits album, which is funny. There's a 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:55.760 lot of hutzpa there. In fact, hutzba is one of 0:18:55.800 --> 0:19:00.240 those words that often gets used to describe Ellison. But 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:04.320 that's why the first version of Oracle was called Version two, 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:06.920 even though it was technically the first one. The company's 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:09.600 first hired to help them build out this software was 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:13.720 a programmer named Bruce Scott, and he started so early 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:17.760 with the others that he's frequently referred to as the 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:22.240 fourth co founder, but technically speaking, he was the company's 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:26.280 first hire. Scott worked on the first several versions of 0:19:26.320 --> 0:19:29.600 the Oracle database software. Now, it took a couple of 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:32.879 years to get Oracle ready for commercial deployment from the 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:36.560 founding of the company. So again STL was founded in 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:40.520 nineteen seventy seven, but by nineteen seventy nine, Oracle was 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:43.320 ready to go, and the company formerly known as Software 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:48.600 Development Laboratories, had undergone a name change, but it still 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:55.399 wasn't called Oracle yet. Instead it became known as Relational Software, Incorporated. 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:58.600 And one wonders if they ever got contacted by people 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:04.359 who were compute dating enthusiasts, because Relational Software suggests to 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:06.920 me that maybe you can hook me up with miswrite. 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:09.040 I don't need that. By the way, I'm happily married. 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:13.159 The company's Oracle product soon became the go to for 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:17.280 lots of big companies and organizations, including other U. S. 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:20.520 Government and military clients. So in addition to the c 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:23.800 i A, there was the Air Force and the Navy. 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:26.160 In fact, depending upon whose account you read, the first 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:30.560 customer for the company wasn't the CIA, but instead was 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:34.800 the Air Force. Either way, the military and intelligence communities 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:38.400 were hot for relational databases, and it makes sense considering 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:41.920 how much information those organizations have to handle, So one 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:46.280 of their earliest non government contracts would be with Bell Labs, 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:49.240 another company that has a huge amount of information to 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:51.439 deal with, so it made sense that they wanted a 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:55.320 database software program where they could structure that data in 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:58.159 a way that was more useful. By the model for 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:01.480 business computing had shifted toward mini computers and the Unix 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.520 operating system for things like database management, So people were 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:08.400 moving away from having that enormous centralized computer that mainframe 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:11.320 inside their business. They were now starting to rely on 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:16.959 these relatively smaller mini computer workstations and the Unix operating 0:21:17.000 --> 0:21:20.760 system so that they could actually do their work instead 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:24.919 of having this proprietary massive computer in their building. That 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:29.120 played right into this young company's strengths and admit, their 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:32.000 decision to focus on many computers was a big success, 0:21:32.080 --> 0:21:36.000 and sales steadily began to climb. Now it wasn't a 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:40.000 runaway success right out of the gate, but they were 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:44.880 making regular sales. In one the company lured away former 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:49.600 IBM employee Umang Gupta to join as the seventeenth employee 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.600 of Relational Software. I'll be talking about some of the 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:55.920 other early employees in part two of this episode, because, 0:21:55.960 --> 0:21:59.240 as it turns out, some people that were hired early 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:03.080 on stuck around with Oracle for quite some time. But 0:22:03.560 --> 0:22:07.000 over that time they began to form some very strong 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:12.840 opinions about Larry Ellison and his managerial style. Anyway, back 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:16.200 to Gupta, his main priority was developing a business plan 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:19.040 for the company. Because you had these three guys who 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:22.880 had founded the company and they knew how to make 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:26.400 and market a product. Everyone said that Ellison was kind 0:22:26.400 --> 0:22:28.440 of the marketing guy. He was the one who would 0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:32.240 go out and sell the product, and Bob Minor was 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:36.159 the architect and at Oates was a developer. But they 0:22:36.200 --> 0:22:39.399 weren't business guys in the sense that they weren't the 0:22:39.400 --> 0:22:43.440 ones ready to run an enormous company um and so 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:46.760 doing things like developing a business plan was not exactly 0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:48.959 in their strong suit. That wasn't one of their uh 0:22:49.440 --> 0:22:53.919 there uh features. So Gupta came in and he created 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:55.880 a business plan for the company, and he was also 0:22:55.920 --> 0:22:59.960 the vice president of the company's microcomputer products division. Now, 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:04.240 remember this was a time when personal computers, also known 0:23:04.280 --> 0:23:07.960 as micro computers, were really starting to become a big success. 0:23:08.080 --> 0:23:11.680 In the early nineteen eighties. The proliferation of computer systems 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:15.320 and businesses and homes created the opportunity for software companies 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:18.280 to go after new markets, and after a relatively short 0:23:18.320 --> 0:23:22.240 stint at the company, Gupta would end up leaving along 0:23:22.240 --> 0:23:27.040 with the first employee hire of Oracle's history, Bruce Scott, 0:23:27.760 --> 0:23:31.960 and they would found Gupta Technologies, which later became cinur 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:35.840 A Software. Also in nineteen eighty one, the company began 0:23:35.880 --> 0:23:39.000 to work on features that would expand Oracles, such as 0:23:39.040 --> 0:23:42.840 the Interactive Application Facility. This was a tool that could 0:23:42.840 --> 0:23:47.479 handle transaction processing forms, which doesn't sound exciting, but it 0:23:47.560 --> 0:23:52.640 was an important development in the company changed names again, 0:23:53.240 --> 0:23:58.040 except this time they finally became the Oracle we know today. 0:23:58.440 --> 0:24:00.920 At that time, the company was enjoying two and a 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:04.960 half million dollars in annual revenue. To grow further, the 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:08.200 company leaders decided to invest a quarter of their revenues 0:24:08.480 --> 0:24:12.720 back into research and development. So how did that pan out? Well, 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:16.040 I'll tell you, but first let's take another quick break 0:24:16.400 --> 0:24:26.400 to thank our sponsor. As it turns out, this two 0:24:26.400 --> 0:24:29.639 and a half million and annual revenue and then the 0:24:29.760 --> 0:24:32.760 reinvestment into research and development paid off in a big way. 0:24:32.840 --> 0:24:36.680 So the next big jump Oracle took was in three 0:24:36.840 --> 0:24:40.760 when the company offered up a version of relational database 0:24:40.800 --> 0:24:45.160 management software that could work on any sort of computer platform, 0:24:45.160 --> 0:24:51.720 which included mainframes, workstations, and personal computers. This expansion doubled 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:56.160 company revenues for that year, which is pretty good validation 0:24:56.320 --> 0:25:00.840 for your decision. This was Oracle version three, which really 0:25:00.880 --> 0:25:05.359 means it was version two, because again they started with two, 0:25:05.400 --> 0:25:07.439 not one. So you know what, when I tell you 0:25:07.560 --> 0:25:12.080 version names, just mentally subtract one from the number, because 0:25:12.080 --> 0:25:15.200 that's what it really was. Now. Version three was such 0:25:15.240 --> 0:25:18.560 a big success that the company decided to push version 0:25:18.680 --> 0:25:22.320 four out the following year, in nineteen eighty four. This 0:25:22.480 --> 0:25:26.160 version included the ability to generate a report based on queries, 0:25:26.440 --> 0:25:29.520