Larry Ellison(1944 — ?)

Future users of large data banks must be protected from having to know how the data is organized in the machine. Activities of users at terminals and most application programs should remain unaffected when the internal representation of data is changed.

Oracle Systems Corporation develops, manufactures, markets and distributes computer software products for the management of relational databases, with the goal of providing information management software that enables users to store, retrieve and manipulate data.

Look around you. Look at the faces of the men and women sitting next to you. I have to tell you that you are not the best and the brightest. Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle Corporation and the fifth richest man in the world, is the best and the brightest — and he does not have a college degree.

He is intense, charming, brilliant, and often ruthless. He has made Oracle into one of the most powerful software companies in the world through a combination of visionary thinking and old-fashioned hard-sell tactics.

The combination of Oracle and Sun will be transformational for the industry. We will be able to engineer and optimize every layer of the hardware and software stack, from storage to applications, to deliver the best possible performance and reliability for our customers.

Born in 1944 in the Bronx, New York, Ellison was raised by his aunt and uncle in South Shore, a working-class neighborhood of Chicago. A modest upbringing that fueled his drive to prove his worth.

It was in small offices in Santa Clara, at the heart of Silicon Valley, that Ellison and his partners founded Oracle in 1977 and wrote the first lines of code for what would become a software empire.

Oracle moved its global headquarters to Redwood Shores in the 1990s. This campus of elliptical mirrored buildings, visible from Highway 101, has become one of Silicon Valley's most recognizable architectural landmarks.

It is here that Ellison built his legendary Japanese-style villa, one of the most expensive private properties in the United States. Steve Jobs, his neighbor and friend, would often come to walk the grounds during his convalescence.

Purchased at 98% in 2012 for approximately $300 million, this island in the Hawaiian archipelago is Ellison's most spectacular personal project. He aims to transform it into a laboratory for a sustainable 21st-century community.