You are here: silicon.com > Research > Special Reports > Agenda Setters 2009

Larry Ellison - Agenda Setters 2009

Name: Larry Ellison

Title: Oracle CEO

Position: 10 Last year: Not ranked

Why? Beating IBM to buy Sun Microsystems

Agree with panel rating?

Closest Rivals

Rupert Murdoch News Corp CEO
Mark Zuckerberg Facebook founder
Barack Obama US President
Tim Berners-Lee Father of the world wide web
Nandan Nilekani Head of the Unique Identification Authority of India and co-founder of Infosys
Larry Ellison Oracle CEO
Niklas Zennström Co-founder of Skype, Joost, Joltid, Kazaa
Christian Engström Deputy chairman of the Swedish Pirate Party
Lord Stephen Carter Former Communications, Technology and Broadcasting Minister
Dave Girouard President, Google Enterprise
Vivek Kundra US federal CIO

As CEO of Oracle, Ellison hasn't made it onto the Agenda Setters list as much as you might expect. He last appeared at number 14 in 2007, with 2003 being his most recent appearance before that.

Ellison has been a distinctive presence on the global tech industry for almost two decades and Oracle has been busy scooping up numerous tech companies over the years to move it from being a database specialist to one of the world's largest software companies.

And 2009 was no exception as Oracle secured its biggest acquisition in the shape of a $7.4bn megadeal for server and software maker Sun Microsystems. The deal secured the Unix-based Solaris operating system and Java programming language for Oracle - and may leave IBM wondering what might have been.

Ellison's influence also extends beyond Oracle, being as he is the majority shareholder of CRM and ERP software-as-a-service provider, NetSuite.

Meanwhile, the Oracle boss will take a base salary of $1 in the 2010 fiscal year - a pay cut of $999,999 from 2008. This is unlikely to cause him too many problems though, as Forbes lists him as the fourth richest person in the world.

One Agenda Setters panellist said: "Ellison's vacuum cleaner approach to vendor acquisition is setting so many agendas for other vendors, while making every enterprise either a current or soon-to-be Oracle customer."

Another added that Oracle's acquisition strategy could make it "a long term challenger to Google".

Ellison has been CEO of Oracle since he founded the company in 1977. He also races sailboats, flies planes, and plays tennis and guitar.