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.

我用了几乎整个夏天的时间来报道和撰写关于萨弗拉•卡兹（Safra Catz），这位谜一样的甲骨文公司（Oracle）联席总裁的文章。我采访了很多人，讨论了卡兹的雄心，她对公司的价值观，她成为总裁的可能性以及她和甲骨文另一位联席总裁查尔斯•菲利普（Charles Philips）的关系。

所有这些都已成文，出版在当期发行的《财富》杂志里。文章的结论是卡兹是一部能够让甲骨文轰鸣前行的复杂但却充满智慧和能力的发动机。

但有一点没被清晰地指出，那就是在尽可能了解卡茨的过程，也是发现她老板拉里•埃利森（Larry Ellison）原来如此成功的一次经历，这也是我的报道中独有的最大成果。

几年前，有这样一段时期，埃利森变得很少积极推动公司运作。因为他的“业余活动”吸引了太多注意力：美国杯帆船赛，游艇，房产，婚姻等等。远观甲骨文发展的外界并不知道，其实埃利森的这一段时期早就结束了。

企业软件领域的“史蒂夫•乔布斯”？

和他的好朋友——苹果公司（Apple）首席执行官史蒂夫•乔布斯（Steve Jobs）一样，埃利森也有很多不愿意做的事情。他对金融就是不感冒。（他对金钱自然是感兴趣的，甲骨文的现金账户就好像是他的私人账户一样）。

他对于运营细节的反感众所周知。事实上，人们长久以来就把他与乔布斯以及苹果公司相比较。埃利森非常信任卡兹的自信、成熟以及她的用人策略：二把手只要能把工作完成即可。这和乔布斯对待蒂姆•库克（Tim Cook）的策略一致，当然这也是要花时间来培养的。

两家公司的创立者都是技术精通并且拥有发展眼光的业内人士，他们也都经历了可怕的下滑期和共同的上行期。（甲骨文在90年代初期达到鼎盛，而那时乔布斯被苹果放逐。）

重要的是埃利森做了每一位首席执行官该做的事。他对自己的产品了若指掌，他的技术人员们都对他崇敬有加，从未想过挑他的毛病。

明确的远景，加之值得信任的手下

他充分信任他麾下的将领们做他们的工作。他制定公司的总体发展方向。重要的是，他在关键时刻改变想法能够使得局势发生大逆转的变化。几年来，甲骨文和如今的苹果一样，并没有进行太多收购。埃利森的经验就是公司的内部增长还不够茁壮，这也是在过去几年里，甲骨文可以在行业内击败SAP以及微软（Microsoft）等竞争对手的原因。

(上周三，甲骨文公司宣布其今年第一个财政季度收益为11.2亿美元，合每股收益22美分，去年同期为10.8亿美元，同比增长4.4%；利润率从28.5%增长到接近35%，在这个季度中总收入还是小幅下降了一些)

如果只是有前银行家卡兹和前分析师菲利普，这两位有战略头脑和有善于购并的高管也是没用的，他们与埃利森想法的变化是一致的。还是那个观点：尽管手下人帮他看见曙光，为他卖命，埃利森还是很有功劳的。

埃利森长期不在办公室，可以分神的原因有很多。商界和投资者应该接受这几个字：谁在乎呢？有需要的时候，埃利森可以通过手机来管理甲骨文。重大事件发生的时候，埃利森经常都是在公司的。

尽管65岁但精力充沛的埃利森很可能还会在商场上活跃好多年。最终，人们可能就不会再对埃利森的价值有疑问了，因为答案是很明显的，他的价值很大。