Slashdot Mirror
PeopleSoft Deflects Oracle Takeover, So Far
SuperDuG send a link to this Reuters report on the Oracle's takeover bid for PeopleSoft, specifically questioning Oracle's committment to PeopleSoft. SuperDuG writes: "A letter from CEO Craig Conway states 'Five days following our announcement we learned of a hostile bid by Oracle Corperation to acquire PeopleSoft. Incredibly, Oracle made it clear their intention was to discontinue all PeopleSoft products, ultimately forcing customers to convert to Oracle's application and database.' Seems the dirt is being slung by both sides and the SEC is about to takeover and decide if this is even legal under anti-trust laws."
... think of that scene from the Simpsons where Bill Gates offers to buyout Homer's Internet business? "Buy 'em out boys!"
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
> Oracle made it clear their intention was to
> discontinue all PeopleSoft products, ultimately
> forcing customers to convert to Oracle's
> application and database.
The only unusual thing about this is that Oracle has admitted it in advance. The more common practice is to tell reassuring lies about continuing support for existing products.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Well, this is disturbing on one level due to the lack of competition if Peoplesoft were absorbed by Oracle, and yet I find myself not being too concerned due to the overwhelming costs and grief that Peoplesoft software has put certain organizations I know of through. Yes, I realize it is complex software, but I felt as if we were actually beta testing Peoplesoft code for them when we implemented it. Soooo, perhaps things might actually turn out for the better?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Is it just me, or has this more or less backfired in a decently big way for Oracle?
Not in a PR sense-- i think everyone kind of already views Oracle as the big-faceless-kind-of-evil corporation archetype. People don't use Oracle because they like Oracle, they use it because it works. Oracle isn't losing any business there.
I just mean in the sense that they have succeeded in none of their goals, yet dumped an absolutely inordinate amount of attention on peoplesoft. I mean, seriously-- who here had heard of PeopleSoft before this whole takeover thing started? Certainly not me. Now, they've gotten a pretty decent amount of free advertising, and while the big media outlets didn't pay too much attention to this, the sites mostly read by those who are likely to be influencing buying decisions on databases or CRM products-- sites like slashdot.org-- have covered this.
I'm curious if there's anyone out there who hadn't heard of PeopleSoft before the oracle buyout attempt but, now that PeopleSoft has been brought to their attention, they are considering buying or deploying a PeopleSoft product.
I've never heard of this tactic before: the article says that Peoplesoft is promising to reimburse their customers for five times the costs of any products they buy, if they end up getting bought out. It seems like a very clever tactic, since it boosts sales and makes them vastly more expensive to buy out, without otherwise affecting their bottom line.
Any idea if this is legal, or if Oracle would have to honor commitments like these?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Here is the scoop.
Every major company that would consider PeopleSoft knows about them. If they don't then their I.T. shop should be let go.
Next this has little to do with Oracle getting to buy PeopleSoft. Think about it. If you were a major company and you were going to evaluate what CRM package you wanted, you would look at the company that PeopleSoft just bought, and probably say "Why go with that, it will be discontinued when the PeopleSoft thing goes through." Well now if you are one of those shops and you want to consider PeopleSoft, you will have some serious doubt that it will be a dead product, once Oracle buys them. Now you will probably consider Oracles product.
The way I see it either way Oracle wins. If they drag this thing out for a year or two the damage will be done to PeopleSoft, and Oracles CRM package will probably gain a few marketshares. If they do somehow manage to buy them (won't happen), then they will kill off one of their major competitors. If you ran Oracle would you do any different? Granted this is bad for customers but from Oracles standpoint it is great.
My personal opinion is similar to the other poster, in that I say STAY AWAY FROM CRM PACKAGES!!!!! I can go in to more detail if you want, but they are a bloated mess.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
Oracle's ad on the back of BusinessWeek(which usually compares Oracle to DB2) has a promise by Oracle to continue supporting Peoplesoft products. This is the list of bullet points on the ad(i am summarizing some of the points and PS=peoplesoft) 1. We will not shutdown PeopleSoft products 2. You will not be forced to convert to Oracle E-Business suite applications 3. ..continue truly high quality, truly global customer service for peoplesoft product...
4. Extend support for PS products beyond the timeframe PS itself has committed to and into the next decade.
5. We will take no actions that reduce the functionality of your PS implementation.
6....will increase the value of your PS investment
7. If and only if you elect to do so, you may move to ORacle E-business suite via FREE module-for-module upgrades
It ends by "Dont be a victim of scare tactics".
The last para is interesting "Ask any customer from our RDB database acquisition from DEC. Nearly nine years later, we are still providing ...suppport...rdb customers"...
Love him or hate him, you have to admire Ellison and what this has done to the entire ERP landscape at the moment by basically putting everyone outside of Oracle and SAP in-play. One of the frequent mistakes of corporate strategy is the internalization of decisions. Long before Peoplesoft and J.D. Edwards began talks, Oracle executives including Ellison got together and diagrammed a number of different scenarios occurring in the ERP sector and scripted the responses Oracle would take in the event of their occurrence. One of those events was Peoplesoft merging with J.D. Edwards thus why it was such a short time between the announcement by Peoplesoft and JD Edwards and Oracle's response. The entire situation was scripted!
The real loser right now is not Peoplesoft, Peoplesoft is fighting for its life. The real loser and I believe the intended target of this attack all along has been JD Edwards. While Peoplesoft is a much more powerful competitor to Oracle, the overlap between the two in terms of customer bases is much smaller then between JD Edwards and Oracle. JD Edwards and Oracle go after almost the same manufacturing customers. Right now, JD Edwards, its customers, and future customers are withering on the vine due to this play. While I may still go ahead with a Peoplesoft purchase given the guarantee Peoplesoft began writing in its contracts (an incredibly smart move by PSFT), I don't get that kind of assuarance with JD Edwards and therefore more likely to go elsewhere.
When the merger of Peoplesoft and JD Edwards was announced both companies were myopic of the environment and only thinking of what would occur together. Neither company had enough forsight to understand what their competitors might do or how the environment would shift around them. I have to hand it to Ellison and the Oracle execs (personally I'm not a fan of the culture or Ellison's bravado) but I do give them credit for thinking ahead and making a brilliant tactical move weakening two competitors at once. That said, everyone else will be on the lookout after such a bold attack by Oracle now that I would be very surprised if Oracle didn't go back to the drawing board and retool their scripts for the next time around.
A couple short points. First, to correct the original post, the SEC is not the agency that handles antitrust matters. The FTC and the DOJ have joint power to enforce the Sherman and Clayton Acts.
Second, currently, the Oracle/Peoplesoft combination is being reviewed by the DOJ. The DOJ has issued what's called a "Second Request", which is literally a second request for more information about the companies involved. In any merger that meets certain threshold requirements, the companies desiring to merge must file a notice with the feds under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act (part of the antitrust laws). If the reviewing agency (the FTC and DOJ sometimes fight over the right to review certain transactions) is wary of the merger, they'll ask for some preliminary information; they'll try to get a better idea of what the market impact might be. (This is sometimes called a "Quick Look.") If there's a big impact, the reviewing agency will often make a "Second Request" for information in order to more precisely define the markets (or market) that the companies compete in. The Second Request is often a rather broad net that asks for a ton of primary source information -- people's email, drafts of documents, presentations, notes in notepads, even the stuff written on people's whiteboards in their offices!
Once the reviewing agency gets all the info (when the companies certify that they have "substantially complied" with the second request), it has 30 days to sift through all of it and come up with a decision as to whether it will file suit to enjoin the merger.
Oracle got its Second Request at the end of June (they're the only ones getting a formal review right now because of the hostile nature of Oracle's transaction). I don't think they've substantially complied yet, so this process may take a while.
My personal opinion is similar to the other poster, in that I say STAY AWAY FROM CRM PACKAGES!!!!!
My experience is that while CRM/ERP packages can work if you're willing to modify your business processes around them, they are horrendously difficult to customize and integrate with other systems, and if you need to do this, you're almost always better off rolling your own.
If you need to do customization and integration, the amount of work that requires will far exceed the cost of simply building an internal data warehouse with a variety of custom, mostly Web-based and workflow-oriented, front ends, all accessing this same data backend, and all inherently integrated with each other for that reason.
Also, the problem of vendor lock-in is enormously worse for any CRM/ERP package than for almost any other type of software. CRM and particularly ERP systems claim to be able to run your business for you. The reality is that you will end up altering your business to at least some extent to support your CRM solution, and if you want to change it, or even upgrade to the latest and greatest release which is incompatible with some of your customizations, then you're in for a very serious world of hurt.
My recommended approach, which is not popular but which will yield the best results in most situations, is to analyze your needs, including integration with existing systems, write documentation and specs and so forth, do an internal estimate for the cost of building it yourself, including maintenance over say a 10 year period, and then talk to your friendly neighborhood ERP vendor. Make sure it is willing to expose all data so that you have a migration path if you choose to migrate (it usually won't be). Make sure it does not tie you into relationships with some proprietary software vendor you may not want to do business with (believe it or not ERP systems usually do support multiple database backends, so this one won't necessarily be a problem). And last but not least, make sure that the ERP vendor offers you something you can't do for yourself at the same or less cost. Typically, for all but the smallest businesses with no IT staff, it won't.
The end result of this analysis is usually that it is faster, cheaper and better to build your own centralized data mart and then write departmental custom apps tying into it. This is especially true if you're willing to leverage Free Software projects like Apache, PostgreSQL, or Firebird DB to reduce development time and costs.
Nonaggression works!