As Published In May 2007

Inside the Technology Revolution

Joshua Greenbaum has 20 years of experience in the technology industry as a computer programmer, systems analyst, author, and consultant. Prior to starting his own firm, Enterprise Applications Consulting, he was one of the first industry analysts to focus exclusively on the enterprise software space, and he has followed Oracle since the mid-1980s. Profit spoke with him to get his insight into how technology has affected all businesses.

PROFIT: What has surprised you about the state of technology today?

GREENBAUM: I'm surprised at how infused business has become with technology and also how much more headroom there is for innovation and technology in business communications and business relations. Every frontier that gets conquered only exposes a new frontier.

PROFIT: If someone from 30 years ago was transported to today, what would be the biggest surprise to that person about how technology has impacted our business lives?

GREENBAUM: Somebody jumping 30 years into the future would be both impressed and underwhelmed. I remember as a kid watching The Jetsons—we figured we would all have our own jet packs and rocket ships, and that didn't happen. I also think we tend to regard technology as a panacea, but the world has only gotten more complicated, despite all this new technology. That said, I believe that the empowerment of the individual—and, therefore, the corporation or the enterprise—that technology has enabled is just tremendously impressive.

PROFIT: What might surprise somebody from today who gets bumped into the future by 30 years?

GREENBAUM: When I see where we're going with the blending of personal communications, personal productivity, and business productivity, I think there is going to be a very impressive capacity for the individual to act in ways that are impossible today.

PROFIT: What's the biggest benefit that technology has given to society so far? And what's the worst effect?

GREENBAUM: Regarding a benefit, if I had to pick one word, I would say communications. Communications in terms of what we need as buyers and sellers, as providers of services, as consumers of services, as managers and workers. Being able to communicate requirements, communicate when there are exceptions, and communicate the solutions to these exceptions will tie us all together into a hopefully efficient and at times, unfortunately, complex web of interactions.

I think the worst effect is that this increased level of communications left us with much more complicated lives than we ever imagined. We now have the ability to work 24/7 in a global office, communicating as much as we possibly can, and that doesn't necessarily make our lives easier or better. It certainly makes them richer, but that's a trade-off that isn't necessarily all positive.

PROFIT: In your experience, do most businesses actively seek out new innovation and new technologies, or do you find that they're having a hard enough time taking advantage of what's available now?

GREENBAUM: It's absolutely both. The fundamental dilemma at the core of the uptake of technology into the business world is trying to juxtapose the requirements for getting the job done today—better, faster, and cheaper—with trying to anticipate the job that is going to come tomorrow and being ready for it with something innovative and exciting. It's a dilemma that translates into very simple questions around the fact that in a world of finite resources, what do you try to do? Stay put as much as possible, or jump ahead and perhaps sacrifice your core, your foundation, in order to be innovative?

PROFIT: Larry Ellison said that when he founded Oracle, conventional wisdom was that relational databases would never be commercially viable. There are many other examples of companies that missed big opportunities or overestimated the potential of a new technology. But the technology industry seems to be able to overcome these problems fairly quickly. Do you think that is specific to that industry?

The Oracle Path Joshua Greenbaum Talks about Oracle turning points. One [turning point] was the advent of Oracle Financials. Before Oracle Financials showed up, financial management, accounts payable and receivable—all those things—were being done on big mainframes. Oracle took the first step to simplify that and launch the modern application market. Another great watershed moment was the acquisition of PeopleSoft and JD Edwards. Fast-forwarding almost 20 years, Oracle made the move to reclaim, quite frankly, its birthright as a powerhouse in enterprise software, and it did that in a very paradigm-shattering moment. Nobody believed that you could do this in the software market and be successful, both in terms of the acquisition and in terms of the aftermath. It changed everybody's perception about what the software market really is, how it works, how customers and vendors relate to one another. Oracle is also a pioneer in tools technology. Products like Oracle Forms, the client software for the tools, and a lot of other products really enabled the building of this social business infrastructure out of software that couldn't have happened any other way. That, in turn, set the stage for the packaged enterprise software market, where Oracle is really making a very strong play. The database begat the tools begat the packaged software. At each one of those key inflection points, Oracle was there making an enormous impact on the market.

GREENBAUM: I would say that the technology industry attracts not just some of the brightest minds in the world but also some of the most nimble and self-critical. Having followed Larry Ellison's career for 20-plus years, one of the things that impresses me most is not just how many successes he's had, but how he deals with failure. One thing about Oracle is that there is no rut too deep to get out of and get moving forward. That is why this company, 30 years after its founding, is still a major force in the industry. I think this ability for self-criticism distinguishes long-term success from long-term failure.

PROFIT: Do you think that's a characteristic of particular people? What really encourages that kind of behavior?

GREENBAUM: One of the nice things about our version of capitalism in this society is that we are very forgiving. Bankruptcy laws are unique in the United States in allowing someone who has failed in one endeavor to come back and succeed in another. For those of us who grew up in this culture that emphasizes not just success but redemption from failure, it is a freeing kind of mentality that says, "I obviously want to go out and do the very best job that I can. But if I don't do it, I will be able to come back again and have a second, third, fourth, and fifth act." I think that is a unique part of our culture and one that, frankly, is what really makes Silicon Valley what it is today.

PROFIT: How is innovation changing as the technology infrastructure changes?

GREENBAUM: What I find most interesting about innovation in general and in the software industry in particular is that innovation is always chasing commoditization. To be innovative, you have to keep moving up the food chain. Today's innovation is tomorrow's commodity. When I look at what has been really innovative in the last 30 years, these are innovations at a basic level of technology that are working pretty well now. When I look at innovation today, I am looking for innovation at a higher level than what we thought of 30, 20, 10, even 5 years ago: innovation at the business process level, innovation that concerns itself with how we actually work together, as humans and as enterprises, and what we can do to make that process faster, better, and cheaper. That innovation has to start now, from a higher base level of technology.

PROFIT: Can you give us an example of genuine business process innovation?

GREENBAUM: I think that internet commerce was that kind of innovation. Just the kinds of simple things that we do today on Amazon.com or eBay represent true innovation in how businesses interact with one another and how they interact with consumers.

PROFIT: You've been watching Oracle for some time. What's your perspective on the 30th anniversary? What does it say about Oracle that the company is that old?

GREENBAUM: It says a lot about Oracle and a lot about Larry Ellison, that his success was not a fluke. This is not a fly-by-night dot-com boom-and-bust kind of company. This is a company that has actually been providing long-term value for 30 years. It says a lot about the pervasiveness of the core relational database technology that Oracle pioneered and how this has become an essential infrastructure for society and business.