InformationWeek -- If you think Larry Ellison and Oracle are developing complex and byzantine schemes to turn the computer industry upside down, consider the reaction of Oracle executive VP John Fowler upon meeting Ellison and coming aboard as the highest-ranking former Sun executive."I didn't know Larry before the acquisition except by reputation," Fowler says, "so, like most executives in this situation, I spent a little time familiarizing myself with my key financial numbers so I could try to seem particularly intelligent when we met.
"But in the very first discussion Larry had with me, he wanted to know the cache sizes of all my processors. He wanted to talk about clock rates and cache sizes!" Fowler says with a laugh. "And every single meeting with Larry since then has been identical on these broad topics: How do you make the products better, where do we need to be investing more, how do we make all the products work better together, and how do we deliver them better for customers?
"And so it's actually kind of a simple place in that regard -- and it all flows from Larry." Read more >>
