Ed Oates
Ed Oates is a notable figure in the technology sector, best known as one of the co-founders of Oracle Corporation, a leading company in relational database management systems. Born in 1946 in Los Angeles, California, Oates pursued a mathematics degree at San Jose State University before serving in the U.S. Army. His career began at Ampex Corporation, where a chance encounter led him to join forces with Larry Ellison and Bob Miner in 1977 to establish Software Development Laboratories, which would later become Oracle.
At Oracle, Oates played a pivotal role in adapting relational database technology for commercial use, particularly for smaller computers, which was a novel approach at the time. Despite facing challenges in business management and contracting during the company's early days, the trio successfully positioned Oracle as a key player in the market. Oates retired in 1996, having significantly benefited from the company's growth after its public offering in 1986.
Beyond his corporate achievements, Oates remains engaged in various philanthropic activities and is passionate about hobbies such as skiing and model railroading. His journey reflects the dynamic nature of the tech industry and the impact of collaborative innovation.
Subject Terms
Ed Oates
Cofounder of Oracle
- Born: 1946
- Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California
Primary Company/Organization: Oracle
Introduction
Ed Oates was one of the three founders (soon joined by a fourth employee) who left Ampex Corporation to form Software Development Laboratories, a relational database and services company that was eventually renamed the Oracle Corporation in honor of its flagship product, the world's leading relational database management system.
Early Life
Edward Albert “Ed” Oates was born in 1946 in Los Angeles, California, and grew up in Campbell. He majored in mathematics at San Jose State University and received his bachelor's degree in 1968. He was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he was assigned to the Personnel Information Systems Command (PERSINSCOM). After completing his obligation, he worked for Singer, Memorex, and Ampex, an electronics company known mainly for professional tape recorders (having introduced instant replay), which also developed customized database software for government agencies. While working at Ampex, he happened to pass by Bob Miner's office, when Miner was talking to his supervisee, Larry Ellison. Ellison mentioned his wife, whose name Oates recognized, having gone to high school with her. The resulting conversation led to Oates joining Ellison and Miner when they left Ampex to form Software Development Laboratories—the company that would become the Oracle Corporation—in August 1977.
Life's Work
Together the partners pooled $2,000 to rent an office in Belmont, California, and Ellison and Miner persuaded their contacts at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to award them a $50,000 contract to develop a relational database. Ellison was in charge of business management, and his management style was at times erratic, as he was given to grand gestures. At Ampex, they had all been unhappy with their compensation model, so Ellison made a point of rewarding hard work and good results at Oracle, even paying bonuses with gold coins. He was also demanding and often abrasive. Miner, who took charge of product development from the company's start until shortly before his retirement in 1993, kept Ellison in check, protesting when employees were kept at work too late.
The company—which was soon renamed Relational Software, Inc. (RSI) in 1979, a name it kept until becoming Oracle Systems Corporation in 1982 in honor of its flagship product—was devoted to relational database management systems, which had been introduced in a 1970 paper and were being developed by IBM, but only for mainframes, and even then at a slow pace. Relational databases allowed users to search for data based on common characteristics, or relations. Oates, Ellison, and Miner realized there was an opportunity to develop commercial and government applications for relational databases, especially on smaller computers, which the industry had dismissed as an impractical application. (In time, Oracle would become associated with great flexibility and scalability, producing software that could be used by multinational corporations or small mom-and-pop businesses.) While Miner developed product and wrote the code with Bruce Scott (the company's first hire), Oates had hands-on general computer knowledge that came into play in determining how to adapt Miner's products to different implementations.
Unlike the founders of most successful start-ups now, the founders of Oracle have freely admitted that in their early days they had no idea what they were doing with regard to their business administration. They badly misjudged the bids they made on contracts, struggled with determining what to charge for their work, and essentially made things up as they went along, with each partner having a clearly defined role and area of control: Oates was the consultant, working with the customers whom Ellison cultivated to sell, adapt, and implement the products that Miner developed. They hired people on impulse, often with little idea of how to evaluate a candidate's suitability for a job; famously, the chief financial officer had begun as their pizza boy. Early customers were mainly government agencies and the intelligence community, fields in which large amounts of data were in use and in need of analysis.
In 1996, Oates, who was never interested in running a large company, retired from Oracle. He had been made wealthy by his stock shares, after the company went public in 1986—though not as wealthy as he could have been, having sold some of his shares back to Oracle in order to meet the terms of a divorce settlement. He sits on the boards of the San Francisco Zoological Society and the Tower Foundation of San Jose State University. He also bought a home theater store, Audible Difference, which he ran from 1996 to 1999. He was on the board of advisors of the Augri Corporation, which was a data analytics company.
Personal Life
Oates is an avid skier and scale-model railroad aficionado. He was a limited partner in Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp. He attended the camp several times and played in the amateur rock band Choc'd.
Bibliography
Bort, Julie. “Where Are They Now? Look What Happened to the Co-Founders of Oracle.” Business Insider, 18 Sept. 2014, www.businessinsider.com/whatever-happened-to-oracles-founders-in-this-iconic-photo-2012-8. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.
Codd, E. F. “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks.” Communications of the ACM 13.6 (1970): n. pag. Print. Ted Codd's original paper introducing the concept of the relational database, the application on which Oracle was based.
Cringely, Robert X. Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date. New York: HarperBusiness, 1996. Print. A history of Silicon valley from before the dot-com bubble burst.
Kenney, Martin. Understanding Silicon Valley: The Anatomy of an Entrepreneurial Region. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000. Print. An overview of Silicon Valley, the culture from which Oracle emerged.
Rao, Arun, and Piero Scarulfi. A History of Silicon Valley. San Francisco: Omniware, 2011. Print. Overview of the Silicon Valley tech company culture.