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Oracle's Hostile Takeover Bid For PeopleSoft
rkuris writes "Oracle has launched a 5.1 billion dollar cash hostle takeover bid against Peoplesoft. PeopleSoft's CEO Craig Conway (a former top executive for Oracle) called Oracle's offer 'atrociously bad behavior from a company with a history of atrociously bad behavior.' 'Obviously it is a transparent attempt to disrupt the [1.7 billion dollar friendly] acquisition of J.D. Edwards by PeopleSoft announced earlier this week.' The week's events have reopened old wounds between the companies, which have a history of hostility and name calling."
Instead of looking at this acquisition from a purely rational, coldly analytical perspective, we should and must begin to look at the quality of the lives of the employees. I would prefer to work for an organization like PeopleSoft. It is an organization that cares.
Oracle is cut from the same cloth as Sun, Siebel, and Cisco. Brutal, cut-throat, survival of the fittest. Increasingly, with the influx of H-1B's and "free" trade, American companies are becoming the ruthless of ogres of the early part of the 20th century. Most of my American colleagues do not want an America where employees are savaged. We gladly accept a small reduction of economic expansion in exchange for a kindler and gentler American workplace and society.
It is this kindler and gentler America that has drawn tens of millions of immigrants to this country.
We shareholders should oppose this hostile takeover and send Larry Ellison back to the Orient that he so admires.
Oracle really hasn't supported the open source and free software communities beyond allowing their closed products to co-exist peacefully with them (and run under them.) They're not IBM or the much-undeservably-maligned Sun, both of whom regularly contribute to open source and free software projects. I wouldn't call them good guys, merely interested observers.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I've been wondering what this would mean for the MySQL/SAP deal announced a week or so ago.
To date SAP has wanted to be agnostic to the underlying database that their software runs on, so you could view the MySQL deal as a nice headline but not really something that was going to have SAP's salesforce pushing MySQL into enterprise customers.... They'd be just as happy if those customers ran Oracle as long as they ran SAP on top of it.
However, if Oracle owns PeopleSoft they suddenly become SAP's largest competitor. As soon as that happens a major SAP infrastructure provider is now the enemy, and SAP might suddenly have reason to push another solution vs. allowing the customer to choose. After the deal with MySQL that solution might well be MySQL.
When you offer your company for sale, you have only yourself to blame when someone makes a bid to buy it. And offering your company for sale is exactly what you're doing when you issue stock.
I have no sympathy for companies that want to be publicly traded corporations but then pretend that they're a private firm.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Have you any idea what it takes to install an ERP? Imagine you've been working on a PeopleSoft installation for the past 10 months. You spend most of your day, every day, in a room of consultants and key users trying to figure out how to make the thing work for your business. You're almost there, just a few more data conversion issues to deal with. You expect this system to run the business for the next 10 years. Now imagine a company buys your ERP vendor and says it will discontinue the product you've been spending millions on installing. Oracle is not the good guy here. Less choice=bad.
The problem with this quote is that it refers to the sales force.
As a developer in the server technologies division of Oracle, I'd have to say that I don't see the "intense competition" that is mentioned. Within my group of about 50-100 (that is, all of the people below the closest VP), there is a true spirit of cooperation. If I have a problem with a specific line of code or a new technology I am learning, there are many other people on the team who are willing to help (just as I am willing to help them), even if they are not working on the same project as me. I know it sounds idealistic, but that's what the real situation is in development.
This cooperation even extends to the H-1Bs, and all of the other recent immigrants with whom I work. I'm one of the few people in my group that was born in America and speaks English natively. However, I look at having this diversity in the group as a positive and not a negative as it brings different viewpoints to technical discussions and makes non-technical discussions a little more interesting.
Now, sometimes there is a level of competition between teams, as each team thinks it knows the best approach to a given problem. But that is healthy, and it forces a detailed refinement of the approaches so that the "higher ups" can make a decision regarding which approach is most appropriate.
So, I can't speak for the sales force, but I don't know if the development cultures are as different as the quote suggests.
Oracle's got the dough, as you'll see here. With $1.15 cash in hand per share, at 5.24 Billion shares outstanding, that's around the $6 billion mark right there. A large portion of this purchase could be made in Oracle stock or by arranging a loan (the technique made famous in the 80's, the Leveraged BuyOut or LBO) as well, reducing the need for cash.
Either way, this story is only just beginning. Analysts portend a consolidation wave coming in the software field. Also consider that Oracle's standing offer amounts to $16 per share of Peoplesoft, but the stock price on Friday closed at $17.82. That means the folks who know best (investment bankers, merger arbitragers) see this as the first step in a longer auction process.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
PeopleSoft runs mostly on Microsoft Servers. The thought of losing a potential revenue stream might cause Ballmer to dip into petty cash and settle this argument overnight. Oracle is not going to integrate PeopleSoft; they are buying a customer list and less competition, in addition to kicking a few more thousand geeks to the curb.
Microsoft could pick them up, keep them as a separate line of business, with management autonomy and shareholders would go for that in a heartbeat. This could turn out to be a very bad move by Oracle. If Microsoft so mch as raised an eyebrow, Oracle stock goes down, making the aquisition more expensive even if Microsoft doesnt play. I see a lot of ways that Oracle could end up regretting this big time.
From working with both companies owith their 'erp' applications, neither is anything to write home about.
.. eeek.
Both were poorly managed, *not* user friendly and had MAJOR cost over-runs. ( in our case in the millions of dollars, mainly due to overselling on their part that borderlined on fraud in oracles case ), not to mention techincal issues right and left.
Having them both under one roof
Disclaimer, oracle project was 5 years ago, they might have improved since then, but i doubt it )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I've used and managed an AS400 with JDE for the past 3.5 years.. and although I don't like the product I have respect for it..
And I've had dealings with Oracles management..
these guys do not fsck around.
They are a VERY driven, powerful bunch of people who get what they want, and get it because they ain't afraid of stepping on toes.
JDE needs to watch their step, cause these guys won't give up easily.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
They acquired it by buying a German company (StarDivision)at a good price, and made a few improvements.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The reality is that Oracle and Peoplesoft have culturals as different as two companies can possibly be. Oracle is of the chewing them up and spit them out school. If Oracle has a soul, it is a very dark one. On the other hand, Peoplesoft has a soul and it is a soul which - how every imperfectly - trys to care for the employees while still calling forth the best from its employees.
If Oracle were to make this hostile bid come to fruition, the majority of Peoplesoft employees would be heading for the door as quickly as possible. The end result would be a pile of IP in Oracle's hands, but not any of the people that can take that IP and extend it and bring value from it.
Of course, the Larry Ellison isn't going to see it that way. Rather, he is seeing that I can take these two pieces and put them together and they will work the way that I anticipate. Why? Because everyone works the way he expects - or he gets rid of them, the list of folks that have bailed out of Oracle due to Larry is very long - and that is just the way it will work out in his world. He isn't going to think about culturally compatibility. But then again that is true of most CEOs trying to build empires. Why do you think that most mergers end up being failures?
You had best start looking anyways, regardless if the bid goes through or not the additional information the mass business public has gleaned on the purchase of JDE is going to severely tarnish PeopleSoft. You guys will now work REALLY hard to make sales because people are going to be iffy on your future. After the of JDE aquisition you won't be #2 for long if you are even are when the merger is completely done. Oracle has been really smart with this, it is win-win for them.
--- I do not moderate.
I always laugh when I hear people say they feel safer with a corporate product because there is a company behind it with the incentive to keep improving it. They've got it exactly backwards. The minute there is no more profit in a product, or the minute it becomes strategic to tie it or bundle it with something else a company will do that. An open source product can continue to advance as long as a single person cares about it.