We have been doing things that are contrary; the things that people tell us won't work from the beginning. In fact, the only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.

If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it - a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is not disruptive at all - you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. We don't have to fight open source, we have to exploit open source.

I am also involved with all the acquisitions and overall strategy. Now it's true, I don't run operations. But I've never really run operations. I've never had the endurance to run sales. The whole idea of selling to the customer just isn't my personality. I'm an engineer, tell me why something isn't working or is and I am curious.

The things that caused problems for me in school are the same things that help me succeed in the world.

When you live your life in different ways, it makes people around you become uncomfortable. So deal with it. They don't know what you are going to do.

... Don't mistake any of this for altruism...Fear and greed just doesn't work. If you want to be successful, quality and service just works better.

Oracle's got 100+ enterprise applications live in the #cloud; today, SAP's got nothin' but SuccessFactors until 2020.