Edition: U.S. / Global

Sound Bytes; Assembling a New Whole

By Lawrence M. Fisher
Published: May 1, 1994

WHY build a company when it's faster to buy several and create a whole greater than the sum of its parts? That's been the mission of Michael Fields, a former executive of the Oracle Systems Corporation who set out to create the first comprehensive management tools, for tasks such as backing up data, security and archival storage, in the uncharted realm of client-server computing. While commonly available from large mainframe producers, such tools have been lacking in client-server set-ups, which split tasks among more than one computer on a network.

Armed with $35 million in capital from Warburg Pincus, a New York venture capital firm, Mr. Fields created the Open Visions Technologies Corporation by acquiring nine companies or divisionsof companies, such as the storage management division of the Control Data Corporation. Open Vision also acquired five products or product families from larger companies. Like the customers it hopes to serve, Open Vision is a "distributed" company, with headquarters in Pleasanton, Calif., and development centers in seven locations across the country, linked by a computer network.

Question: Why isn't systems management already provided by the sellers of operating systems or data base management software?

Answer: Whenever you move into a new paradigm, which is how I describe client-server, there are new requirements. Client-server lets users get close to actual production data, so you need expertise to manage it successfully. That's what Open Vision delivers in tools and services. These are all things the system software guys should do well, but the fact is they don't.

Q: What's different about Open Vision?

A: Open Vision is the first company to start by launching a major acquisition campaign to bring technologies and people together, not based on market share, but on how "integratable" they are. We walked away from a lot of companies with large market share but whose products did not meet our standards of integration. Buyers are looking for a suite of technologies that work together. The second criterion was that the engineers who built the products had to come along. If they didn't feel comfortable joining Open Vision it wouldn't matter if the owners gave the company to us.

Q: You were at Oracle for its dramatic rise, its fall in 1990, when it had to restate its earnings, and its rise again. What lessons did you learn from that experience?

A: I was appointed president of Oracle U.S.A. about one week after the debacle in 1990, and I had to face the investment community when they heard what had happened. The stock went from $18 to $4.50 in a week. I learned you have to manage your business not based on what you would like to do but on what you know you can do. You can't let growth get too far ahead of your ability to support it.

Q: You are active in Black Executives in Software Technology. What do you think can be done about the relative absence of African Americans in this industry?

A: In educational centers, they tend to teach the science of developing computer systems, which is for people who want to go on to develop hardware. That path scares away a lot of blacks and a lot of women. But the real opportunities are in application development, which is built much more on logic than on physics. I tell students to see the software industry as a major opportunity. Although there is no industry I consider color- or gender-blind, this is one where your abilities carry much more weight than your gender or color. Michael S. Fields Born: Oct. 1, 1945; New York City. Noncomputer reading: "The Warburgs," by Ron Chernow. Ideal escape: Four days on Maui. Hobbies: Golf, pocket billiards, gadgets. Family: Wife, Sandra; daughters, Michelle, 26, and Tara, 22. Drives: 1990 BMW 750. Computers: Generic 486 DX2 66 mhz PC from CompUSA; a Macintosh Duo for traveling.