科技前沿:硅谷最被低估的CEO

Silicon Valley's most underrated CEO
I spent most of the summer reporting and writing a feature story about Safra Catz, the enigmatic co-president of Oracle (ORCL). I talked to oodles of people about Catz's ambitions, her value to the company, the likelihood of her becoming CEO, and her relationship with Charles Phillips, Oracle's other co-president.

All this is in the article, published in the current issue of Fortune. The conclusion is that Catz is a complicated, competent, intelligent pile-driver of an executive who makes Oracle hum.

Left explicitly unsaid in the quest to find out as much as possible about Safra Catz is just how successful her boss, Larry Ellison, has been as CEO of Oracle. This was my single greatest takeaway from my reporting.

There was a period, years ago, when Ellison became disengaged from actively running the company. Because his extracurricular activities get so much attention — the America's Cup battles, the yachts, the homes, the marriages, and so on — the world that watches Oracle from afar doesn't quite get that Ellison's era of disengagement ended a long time ago.

The Steve Jobs of enterprise software?

Like his buddy, Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs, there certainly are things Ellison doesn't want to do. He's just not that into finance. (He's into money, of course, and is as tight-fisted with Oracle's cash as he free-spending with his own.)

He's a known enemy of operational details. The comparisons with Jobs and Apple (AAPL) go further, in fact. In Catz, Ellison had the confidence, maturity and discipline to hire a get-it-done No. 2, just as Jobs has done with Tim Cook, whom I've also spent some time on.

Both founders are technically proficient industry visionaries who've been through disastrous downs and stratospheric ups. (Oracle hit the skids in the early 90s, when Jobs was exiled from Apple.)

The point about Ellison is that he has done just what a CEO should do. He knows so much about his product that the technical people respect him and don't try to B.S. him.

A clear vision, plus trusted lieutenants

He trusts his operational lieutenants enough to do their jobs. He sets overall direction for the company. Critically, he changed his mind at a moment when doing so made all the difference. For years Oracle, like Apple to this day, didn't do much in the way of acquisitions. Ellison's epiphany that organic (that is, in-house) growth wasn't going to be good enough is the reason that Oracle has trounced SAP (SAP), Microsoft (MSFT) and anyone else in its way over the past half decade.

(Late Wednesday Oracle announced fiscal first quarter earnings of $1.12 billion, or 22 cents a share, 4.4% from $1.08 billion a year earlier. Margins climbed to almost 35%, from 28.5% – all during a quarter in which revenues fell slightly.)

It's worth noting that hiring ex-banker Catz and ex-analyst Phillips, both strategically minded and acquisition-friendly executives, coincided with Ellison's change of heart. The point is the same, though. If the people he hired helped him see the light, bully for him. Ellison gets to take credit.

Much is also made of Ellison's long absences from the office and his distractedness. The business world and investors should greet such talk with two words: Who cares? Ellison's cell phone keeps him as close to Oracle as he needs to be. When important things are happening Ellison is a constant presence at Oracle.

At a youthful 65 he quite likely will be running his show for years to come. Eventually people may even stop wondering how much credit for it all he deserves because the answer will be apparent: A whole lot.

我用了幾乎整個夏天的時間來報道和撰寫關於薩弗拉•卡茲（Safra Catz），這位謎一樣的甲骨文公司（Oracle）聯席總裁的文章。我採訪了很多人，討論了卡茲的雄心，她對公司的價值觀，她成爲總裁的可能性以及她和甲骨文另一位聯席總裁查爾斯•菲利普（Charles Philips）的關係。

所有這些都已成文，出版在當期發行的《財富》雜誌裏。文章的結論是卡茲是一部能夠讓甲骨文轟鳴前行的複雜但卻充滿智慧和能力的發動機。

但有一點沒被清晰地指出，那就是在儘可能瞭解卡茨的過程，也是發現她老闆拉里•埃利森（Larry Ellison）原來如此成功的一次經歷，這也是我的報道中獨有的最大成果。

幾年前，有這樣一段時期，埃利森變得很少積極推動公司運作。因爲他的“業餘活動”吸引了太多注意力：美國杯帆船賽，遊艇，房產，婚姻等等。遠觀甲骨文發展的外界並不知道，其實埃利森的這一段時期早就結束了。

企業軟件領域的“史蒂夫•喬布斯”？

和他的好朋友——蘋果公司（Apple）首席執行官史蒂夫•喬布斯（Steve Jobs）一樣，埃利森也有很多不願意做的事情。他對金融就是不感冒。（他對金錢自然是感興趣的，甲骨文的現金賬戶就好像是他的私人賬戶一樣）。

他對於運營細節的反感衆所周知。事實上，人們長久以來就把他與喬布斯以及蘋果公司相比較。埃利森非常信任卡茲的自信、成熟以及她的用人策略：二把手只要能把工作完成即可。這和喬布斯對待蒂姆•庫克（Tim Cook）的策略一致，當然這也是要花時間來培養的。

兩家公司的創立者都是技術精通並且擁有發展眼光的業內人士，他們也都經歷了可怕的下滑期和共同的上行期。（甲骨文在90年代初期達到鼎盛，而那時喬布斯被蘋果放逐。）

重要的是埃利森做了每一位首席執行官該做的事。他對自己的產品瞭若指掌，他的技術人員們都對他崇敬有加，從未想過挑他的毛病。

明確的遠景，加之值得信任的手下

他充分信任他麾下的將領們做他們的工作。他制定公司的總體發展方向。重要的是，他在關鍵時刻改變想法能夠使得局勢發生大逆轉的變化。幾年來，甲骨文和如今的蘋果一樣，並沒有進行太多收購。埃利森的經驗就是公司的內部增長還不夠茁壯，這也是在過去幾年裏，甲骨文可以在行業內擊敗SAP以及微軟（Microsoft）等競爭對手的原因。

(上週三，甲骨文公司宣佈其今年第一個財政季度收益爲11.2億美元，合每股收益22美分，去年同期爲10.8億美元，同比增長4.4%；利潤率從28.5%增長到接近35%，在這個季度中總收入還是小幅下降了一些)

如果只是有前銀行家卡茲和前分析師菲利普，這兩位有戰略頭腦和有善於購併的高管也是沒用的，他們與埃利森想法的變化是一致的。還是那個觀點：儘管手下人幫他看見曙光，爲他賣命，埃利森還是很有功勞的。

埃利森長期不在辦公室，可以分神的原因有很多。商界和投資者應該接受這幾個字：誰在乎呢？有需要的時候，埃利森可以通過手機來管理甲骨文。重大事件發生的時候，埃利森經常都是在公司的。

儘管65歲但精力充沛的埃利森很可能還會在商場上活躍好多年。最終，人們可能就不會再對埃利森的價值有疑問了，因爲答案是很明顯的，他的價值很大。