Slashdot Mirror
PeopleSoft Goes To Oracle
codecool writes "It is final. Peoplesoft's Board of directors finally relented and agreed to let Oracle have them for $26.50 per share. Finally, it all comes to an end." Closing date is set for mid-January timeframe.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
So, I wonder if PeopleSoft customers can take advantage of the full refunds on their software licenses that were being offered if Oracle succeeded. The article's a little short on details.
The top 4 out of 5 stories in the wsj.com site an hour back were-
Peoplesoft-Oracle.
JnJ- Guidant
Sprint-Nextel
Honeywell-Novar
London Stock Exchange- Deutsche Boerse
Lots of mergers/acquistions going on. Good for companies who want less competition. Bad for consumers.
Considering that Oracle made 10.30B last year alone, I think this is probably a wise investment for them. PeopleSoft's software fits nicely within the framework that Oracle is already able to build and offer to it's customers. This move will surely broaden the markets with which Oracle can move into and deploy their products...
And don't forget the most important one: Molson's and Coor's .... this is far scarrier than Peoplesoft and Oracle!!!!
SAP is the major competition in the ERP market. If I remember correctly, SAP has a larger customer base than Oracle and PeopleSoft combined.
Infact they make much more then that. ERP is lucrative business - believe me. I've been working on these systems for 6+ years now.
When i worked for Oracle - even the most basic project was a 2-5 million dollar project and that was before montly/yearly support plans and extended consulting fees.
There is money to be made, but also technology to be learned from. Peoplesoft has its HR roots and JD Edwards has its MRP/Manufacturing roots that oracle could learn tons from.
Since Oracle's stated goal was to simply buy PeopleSoft to destroy their product line (something which I still can't believe the judge is letting them get away with), wasn't there a poison pill that if Oracle discontinued their product they'd be liable to refund every customer in full? What happened to that?
Peoplesoft and IBM recently penned a strategic alliance to resell and promote each others' products. So I guess this will begoing the way of the dodo. Or will it? Will the contract language leave Oracle in the embarrassing position of promoting DB2 as the preferred database platform for Peoplesoft and JD Edwards?
I'm also wondering, long-term, about support from Oracle for Peoplsoft on platforms other than Oracle. Will Oracle support Peoplesoft on Oracle, Oracle, and Oracle? My understanding that most Peoplesoft implementations were historically SQL Server with the new preferred platform being DB2. if that changes again it'd be BIG headaches for DB2 customers...
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
A horizontal merger is one in which both companies compete for the same market. For instance, if MS were to buy out Oracle's database platform and services, that would be a horizontal merger, since MS already has SQL Server.
:)
A vertical merger is one in which, for instance, one company uses a product of the other company in order to build and sell their own product. An example of this would be if a cellular service provider were to buy a cell phone manufacturer. (I don't know of any real-world instances of this; it's only a theoretical example.)
Hope that helps
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that Oracle had little interest in PeopleSoft's products and more interest in removing a competitor. PeopleSoft and IBM are tight (PeopleSoft's products can be deployed on WebSphere, I believe) and purchasing PeopleSoft (and stopping development on their products) would not only remove a competitor, it would also be detrimental to IBM. That's why PeopleSoft created the poison pill, they feared that Oracle would buy them and then stop supporting their customers and instead foist their own solutions on them. If you've already got PeopleSoft + WebSphere, it's not so difficult to go with DB2 over Oracle, but if you have Oracle already, you'll buy their DB too.
- Hiring a couple of in-house programmers for a year to do development is probably not much more expensive (perhaps even cheaper) than paying the proprietary software to begin with, espessailly once you get customizations done.
Hiring a couple of in-house programmers for a year will get you jack squat progress towards a full-blown home-rolled ERP system.I will wager you could pull off something like a inventory management package or order management interface that would work in a small company, but there is no way a "couple of in-house programmers" could produce anything close to an Oracle/PeopleSoft/Great Plains/SAP type system.
The system flexability, business knowledge requirements, legal issues, tax issues, GAAP requirements, Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, etc. would overwhelm any small team. Couple that with the need for on-going support and upgrades, regulatory updated (taxes, SoX, etc.) and you've got a team of hundreds working on the project.
"But it's open-source!" you cry, "We'll give it to the community and let them extend and build it!" Without a in-stone development plan you would just have a ton of people all working on various bits and it would be difficult if not impossible because you would have a hard time determining where someone would fit into the project based on their desire to contribute and their skills/background.
If you could manage to pull all this off - you would have to offer some type of 24x7 support if you wanted anyone else to use your software. No company that would need an ERP solution would touch one without serious support backing it up. So you setup a division to charge for and provide 24x7 technical support (and don't forget you'll need to provide functional support too).
Guess what; you just re-built an SAP or a PeopleSoft.
In Korea, only old people acquire Peoplesoft :D
Contrary to a bunch of the people here, I think it's nice that we can get more consolidation. The sooner we get it down to 2 or 3 gigantic competitors, the sooner more small people can start up and fill the gaps.
Assuming they aren't stifled by the big people already in place. Oh well. Good luck, new startup companies!
If there are any.
I'm sure there'll be at least one.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
From the Computer World article: "After careful consideration, PeopleSoft's board decided that Oracle's latest offer provides good value for PeopleSoft's stockholders, the company said. The agreement ends a long, emotional struggle, it said."
I hate it when execs say things like this, because they don't mean a word of it. What they really mean is, "After careful consideration, PeopleSoft's board decided that they would make a hell of a lot of money, and screw the little guys -- like customers, employees, etc."
Oracle wants nothing with PeopleSoft except to destroy it utterly. They don't want any competition in the marketplace, and PeopleSoft is their only competition. Ellison, the madman, said so himself way back at the beginning of this fiasco.
My father-in-law and a very good friend of mine are both software consultants for PeopleSoft. They may get to keep their jobs, since Oracle doesn't currently have a CRM product, but I expect they're both going to be looking for work before 2005 is done with.
Simply more proof that the world is going to hell.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
The match is a good one, and I think that both the customers and the companies will benefit.
Oracle is in the business of selling Relational Databases [RDBs]. Unfortunately, with competition from DB2/Informix, SQLServer, Sybase, Ingres, MySQL, Postgres, and a myriad of tiny little database vendors you've never heard of [Progress/ObjectStore, Intersystems/Cache, Versant/POET, Objectivity, etc], the database end of things is rapidly becoming little more than a commodity.
Increasingly, the profit is in the middleware & the front ends, where the business logic and the "schema" reside. Oracle is rather weak in those areas, hence its desire to subsume whatever logic/schema template vendors [and customer bases married to those templates] that it can get its grubby little hands on.
The problem is that most of Oracle's channel is pursuing the very same market, so that Oracle has, in effect, declared war on its own channel. And the road to business hell is paved with the skeletons of enterprises that thought they could screw the channel and get away with it.
Ever wonder why you can only order a Coca-Cola in a restaurant? Ie: Why is it that you can never find Pepsi products when you go out to eat? Setting aside the fact that Coke might have a better sales staff, a better management team, and a better product at a better price, the reason is that PepsiCo declared war on their channel when they purchased Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut.
And you know what the channel - from the little Mom-n-Pop restaurants down the street, all the way to the global oligopolies, like McDonald's & Burger King - had to say in response?
SCREW YOU, PEPSICO!!!
Larry Ellison, you have been forewarned...