Bernard Ebbers Quotes

The digital business is a fantastic business to be in. The only thing you have to do is build a cost structure for a declining business, which is different from the structure for a growing business.

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.

Great businesses can be built on scale. I think Amazon has built a phenomenal commerce business largely on scale. Their network effect isn't obvious to me, but boy, have they used scale effectively.

In the technology world, you have to execute fast or you're out of business.

If you are in this business long enough, you hear about a thousand things that are going to kill you. Open source? Yeah, we are not dead yet. Cloud? That's not new; it's a new name.

It's not about revenues: The fundamental economics in digital business is scale and margins. The top line has become the bottom line.

If you think about the market that we're in, and more broadly just the enterprise software market, the kind of transition that's happening right now from legacy systems to the cloud is literally, by definition, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The Internet is the Viagra of big business.

... one of the things that will distinguish businesses into this next decade is ... how they use information.... I think it'll change culture, it'll change everything that you do. And I believe it'll differentiate the winners and the losers.

The cloud is one of the most extraordinary opportunities of our lifetime. If we're not investing now, we'll rue the day we didn't.

There is a difference between what technology enables and what historical business practices enable.

I think of digital as a means to an end: How do I service and get more loyal customers, how do I achieve operational excellence, and how do I change my culture?

In this business, technology is life or death.

Almost every customer that I talk to is talking about how they're using APIs, and what a step function they are for their business.

Digital companies can reach new customers immediately and at virtually zero marginal cost. They can compete in new sectors by collaborating with peers and competitors. They can massively improve quality and productivity by converging technologies and sources of data.

Not since the steam engine has any invention disrupted business models like the Internet. Whole industries including music distribution, yellow-pages directories, landline telephones, and fax machines have been radically reordered by the digital revolution.

I sensed my chance and embraced the telecom business. I started marketing telephones, answering/fax machines under the brand name Beetel, and the company picked up really fast.

Internet entrepreneurs are using technology at every level of their company - from a one-person agency to a small firm, the newest technological advances are interwoven throughout every aspect of Internet-based businesses.

This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.

I had learnt from my years of being in the services business, like networking and closely watching the early days of the Internet, that scale leads to many possibilities.

I generally disagree with most of the very high margin opportunities. Why? Because it's a business strategy tradeoff: the lower the margin you take, the faster you grow.

If someone asks me what cloud computing is, I try not to get bogged down with definitions. I tell them that, simply put, cloud computing is a better way to run your business.

Ukrainian business must really embrace global competition. We need to understand that competition for resources and clients is not with competitors from across the street or from another city, but with millions of businesses around the world.

When e-commerce companies build scale, cost comes down. Companies that can handle scale and reduce costs over time will win. Margins will come from reducing costs over time and not by increasing prices. Technology is the answer at large scale.

The United States is running a 21st century government under 1940s rules.