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Federal Judge Rules Oracle can Bid for PeopleSoft 132

Posted by CowboyNeal from the carry-on-ellison dept.
terrymaster69 writes "The NY Times reports (free reg, required) that Oracle may have the go ahead to continue its hostile bidding for PeopleSoft. The Justice Department had previously tried to paint the merger as anti-competitive in the corporate services software market. 'Judge Vaughn R. Walker of the Federal District Court in San Francisco rejected the government's definition of the market as too narrow, noting that the software business is particularly dynamic, with a host of current and emerging competitors in that area including Microsoft.'"
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Federal Judge Rules Oracle can Bid for PeopleSoft More

Federal Judge Rules Oracle can Bid for PeopleSoft

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  • Point (Score:3, Insightful)

    by leonmergen ( 807379 ) * <lmergen@@@gmail...com> on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:05AM (#10211208) Homepage
    Well, I think they do have a point there... there is plenty of competition around in the database market, and Oracle would still have to compete in a 'real' way - as far as I can see they can't be able to abuse their market position, simply because there's enough competition.

    On the other hand, a big corporation getting even bigger isn't really a good thing...

    • Re:Point (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:15AM (#10211262) Journal
      there is plenty of competition around in the database market

      This case not related to the database market. Oracle is trying to acquire PeopleSoft in order to improve their position in the applications market. This includes things like HR, Payroll, Accounting and Purchasing systems.

      • Re:Point (Score:2, Redundant)

        by jmcmunn ( 307798 )

        Oh my god!! I work for a company that does accounting and Payroll applications...does this mean Oracle is going to make me lose my job!!??

        One C++ programmer, looking for a new job before Oracle squashes us all!
      • Well, there is some competition there, too. There's SAP and then also Baan - is Baan still in business?

        • I don't think Baan exists anymore.

          • Re:Point (Score:3, Informative)

            by TopShelf ( 92521 )
            Baan was bought by SSA Global, which produces BPCS. SSA has been on a bit of a buying binge, having bought WMS (Warehouse Management System) vendor EXE as well.
            • BPCS still exists? Wow. You learn something new every day.
              • Or rather, you learn something OLD. Last year, I was asked to learn RPG and help with BPCS support and maintenance... blech!
                • When I was 15 or 16, I learned a bit of RPG during my summer assignment in a company, which used Honeywell mainframes running... GICOS or something like that.

                  But my impression has always been that RPG is not a real programming language, as it's so damn specialized for batch processing. More than COBOL.

                  Nowadays, I collect vintage computer stuff. I just got a dual 8" floppy drive. Hmmmm.. wonder if RPG has ever been run on CP/M....
      • Exactly, Oracle wants access to the customers because the software is a POS. I'm sorry, I had to say it but i've been the unlucky DBA assigned to support our Psft CRM implementation.

      • As near as I understand it, the judge is effectively saying that Oracle is allowed to "force" the PeopleSoft board to sell?

        By what means? If the board is convinced the long-term value of the company is better served by remaining independant, who is the judge to say otherwise? Who is anyone other than the stock and share holders of the business to say otherwise?

        • The judge isn't saying that. The Department of Justice filed an anti-trust case in court, saying that a combination of Oracle and PeopleSoft would be anti-competitive. In the opinion of the DOJ, such a combination would turn what is a three-company ERP software market (SAP, Oracle and PSoft) into a two-company market.

          Oracle argued that there are other competitors that do get into the market occasionally. Lawson is one and MS is another.

          The judge is saying that the DOJ is wrong and that Oracle is permit

          • Thanks for the clarification. I thought this was some sort of forced-takeover issue.

            But I always thought of PeopleSoft as an HR solution in the first place, so I'd have thought Oracle was trying to fill out their product portfolio. As long as components remain interchangeable, I don't see why it should be an issue for a vendor to have multiple business service components. The catch is whether those components are being used to establish artificial barriers, or if they're being used to allow customers

            • I thought this was some sort of forced-takeover issue.

              You may have been confused because it's a hostile takeover.

              That means that Oracle is trying to take over PeopleSoft, while PeopleSoft is resisting the takeover. Oracle simply tries to buy as many shares as it can until Oracle has a controlling share. The target firm (PeopleSoft) is resisting because they don't think it will ultimately be good for PeopleSoft, but if Oracle gets the controlling share then they can't do anything.
        • No, the judge just said that in this case the US Govt. is not allowed to try and stop Oracle. Oracle cannot force the PeopleSoft board to do anything. What Oracle _can_ do is throw enough money in the pot to make all the shareholders want to take the offer. After all, the board of PeopleSoft are supposed to have the best interests of the share holders in mind.
        • That's right, the board has to obey the shareholders. Peoplesoft is a publicly traded company. If Oracle is willing to pay what the shareholder are asking, then they're the new shareholders. "We reserver the right to reserve service..." does not apply to publicly traded companies. If you wanted to still control your company, you shouldn't have sold it. That said, earlier, Peoplesofts shareholders resisted a bid by Oracle to purchase their shares, feeling that a short-term profit was less than the long

      • Re:Point (Score:2, Informative)

        by balzak ( 704142 )
        Actually, you both are correct. PeopleSoft is an applications vendor, so we help companies keep track of their stuff (money, employees, customers, etc.) which is not easy to do when the company gets large (this is an admittedly very simplified explanation of what we do). On the surface, Oracle seeks to acquire Psoft, kill the product off (bug fixes only), and convert its customers over to Oracle applications on Oracle's database. For a very large segment of ERP customers world-wide, this will mean that t

    • Re:Point (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ronald Dumsfeld ( 723277 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:22AM (#10211298)
      Well, I think they do have a point there... there is plenty of competition around in the database market, and Oracle would still have to compete in a 'real' way - as far as I can see they can't be able to abuse their market position, simply because there's enough competition.
      This ain't about competition in the database market, it's about competition for ERP [wikipedia.org] software. These work on top of a database, and many ERP packages allow you to choose the underlying database.

      I think this is a dreadful decision, Oracle's ERP offering is horrid, and the intent is simply to kill a competitor. If the takeover does go through I hope the clients Oracle is hoping to acquire go elsewhere. What is even more scary is to discover that Microsoft has considered buying SAP [sap.com]. That would instantly give MS a huge market share in back-end business software. You can bet that SAP on non-MS platforms wouldn't be kept up to date with features despite the fact that it runs like a two-legged dog when implemented on Windows.

      • Re:Point (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I would like to think this is an insightful post yet I became weary when you said iF the Unsertanity and Doubt about MS buying SAP was scary, the post resulted in too much FUD.

      • Re:Point (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Microsoft have considered buying SAP have they? Don't make us all laugh now. SAP is as big, if not bigger, than Microsoft. Now, Microsoft and SAP were at one point talking about a merger but it was only ever at a very simple level, and nothing ever came to it. Besides which if Microsoft and SAP were to announce a merger the DoJ and EU Monopolies Comission would have a field day.

        • Re:Point (Score:5, Informative)

          by skaffen42 ( 579313 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @08:07AM (#10211555)
          Microsoft have considered buying SAP have they? Don't make us all laugh now. SAP is as big, if not bigger, than Microsoft.

          Dude, what have you been smoking? SAP has a market cap of about $46 billion and anual revenue of about $9 billion a year. Microsoft has a market cap of nearly $300 billion and revenues of around $37 billion a year. So I'm not really sure how you can claim SAP is as big as MS.

          For comparison, Oracle has a market cap of $51 billion vs. Peoplesoft's market cap of $7 billion. Looking at it that way, the ratio in sizes between MS/SAP compared to Oracle/Peoplesoft is about the same.

          Draw your own conclusions...

        • From the inside rumor mill (I'm not an insider, but I have friends), MS was planning to acquire SAP. Not merge. MS did have enough cash/stock to buyout SAP. Another rumor was the gesture/approach from MS to SAP was more to foster working relationships; To wit, to get SAP running on Windows Server 2003 and beyond a bit better than a two-legged dog, as another person put it.

      • Re:Point (Score:3, Insightful)

        by andy1307 ( 656570 )
        I think this is a dreadful decision, Oracle's ERP offering is horrid, and the intent is simply to kill a competitor.

        If Oracle "killed" Peoplesoft, customers would simply move to SAP. This takeover will tie peoplesoft to the oracle database product. With Oracle moving to support [dba-oracle.com] linux, maybe we'll see more linux support. More enterprise applications running on linux is always a good thing. There is only so much economic value to a gameboy running linux.

        • You're thinking in the short-term. Ellison has already said that he intends to buy Peoplesoft in order to kill off both the Peoplesoft ERP and the JD Edwards applications. Oracle has no plans to absorb them and sell them in concert with its existing offerings. It's an expensive execution plan is all.

          But they won't do it all at once. They'll take out pieces, until it's more difficult to move to SAP than to simply pay Oracle licensing fees. Then Oracle will have the edge, unless current Peoplesoft custo
      • Microsoft did consider buying SAP, but has given up and bought Great Plains [microsoft.com].

      • This ain't about competition in the database market, it's about competition for ERP software. These work on top of a database, and many ERP packages allow you to choose the underlying database.


        Well, but do you think Oracle will let ex-Peoplesoft customers stay with their non-Oracle DBMSs?

        I think this is a dreadful decision, Oracle's ERP offering is horrid, and the intent is simply to kill a competitor.

        Yup, yup, and yup.
    • It is blatently obvious to me that you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.

  • Well, this is just great. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by senatorpjt ( 709879 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:11AM (#10211236)
    There's a HRMS from PeopleSoft at work to handle payroll, the thing doesn't work as it is, and this certainly isn't going to help.

    It's a good thing I still demand my paychecks printed on a piece of paper in an envelope I can carry to the bank myself.

    • Re:Well, this is just great. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I still demand my paychecks printed on a piece of paper

      Yeah I agree, writing electronically is overrated and how can you be sure what you wrote is your words that you wrote; I mean there isn't any proof. like the other day, UPs dropped of a brand new computer that I supposdely didn't write on an electonic order form and yet it still arrived. Hmmm - tin foil anyone?

    • Re:Well, this is just great. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:34AM (#10211360)
      It's a good thing I still demand my paychecks printed on a piece of paper in an envelope I can carry to the bank myself.

      Funny, I perfer "Direct Deposit", "ACH Transfers", and "Online Bill Pay" because when properly configured computer systems move my money, I see there less risk of it going wrong. Paper checks can get lost in transit and take several days to clear, but with electronic transfers the transaction clears instantly and I get access to the money that's rightfully mine immediately rather than having to wait up to a week for processing to happen.

      • Re:Well, this is just great. (Score:5, Funny)

        by Otter ( 3800 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:59AM (#10211494) Journal
        I prefer direct deposit because it eliminates the (disturbingly likely) possibility of my spilling ketchup on my paycheck or putting it in my pocket, forgetting about it and running it through the washing machine.
      • AND, I get get his money too!
      • My paycheck once took a trip around the country. Took over a week to get there.

        My rent check took a month to get to my landlord and lived a few blocks away.

        Oh, and when you deposit a check. The banks now just make a copy and shred the original. So you're really not any better off using paper. Do a news search for Check21
        • Check 21 is not effective until October 28. Until then, we're still moving massive amounts of paper around the country every day.

          On October 29th ... we'll still be moving massive amounts of paper around the country every day.

          Check 21 will catch on, but it will probably build slowly at first.

          • Thanks for the correction on the date. I think you'll be surprised at how fast banks adopt this. It's a major cost savings for them to be able to eliminate the filing and forwarding of the paper check and reproduce a replacement check only when needed.

            So yes, after the 28th there will be paper flying around and it's definitely not going to disappear any time soon, but the volume will begin to decrease after that date. And I'm sure most of the larger banks have Check21 projects in place and will startup on
            • The cost savings isn't as great as you'd like. If a bank chooses to send images to the fed instead of paper, and the receiving bank requires paper, the sending bank must pay for the conversion (instead of the receiving bank) - the economics of the implementation are backwards!
              • Most banks are going to reproduce their own checks rather than relying on the fed to do it. That was the actual system I was working on.

                I imagine there's a compiled list of banks accepting electronic checks and/or a list of ones that don't. All incoming checks get shredded, and the ones that go to banks that can't handle electronic transfers get the replacement check.

                I agree the savings doesn't seem like much, but when you're talking large banks and millions of checks a penny or two can make quite a diff
                • Our plan is to accept images starting this fall, and then start sending them next spring. Hopefully by then, some our our neighboring banks are at least accepting images - lowering the cost of doing this.

                  One real nice part about sending the images instead of the paper is that we'll be able to get rid of the couriers - and their problems driving in the winter.

                  I don't think it will take long to get to the point where there's a critical mass of banks accepting images. Once that happens, the cost of couri

                  • So I guess anyone reading this that is a courier for a bank should probably start looking for another job.
                    • The writing's been on the wall for them for a while. 9/11 was the final straw for moving paper around. When all air traffic was grounded, the federal reserve bank sat on a mountain of float - and I don't think that they'll be doing that again.
      • when properly configured computer systems move my money

        That's the real trick, isn't it? How do you know that that's the case, and not Diebold machines running Windows moving your money?

        • I've yet to see a consumer bill-pay service that doesn't offer a "If we screw up, we'll eat the penalty fee and call the company your payment missed and take the blame." policy. Of course, such a policy rarely gets used because most mistakes are the consumer's data entry flaw rather than a system flaw.
      • You are undoubted correct, and I do preferr direct deposit personally, but a group of us at a former employer found out that the employer is allowed to do "correcting transactions". Well this former employer decided that they needed the funds tied up in what would have constituted our last paychecks ( unbeknownst to most of us ). So they had the payroll company do a "correcting transaction" to suck the money they had paid us ( that last paycheck ) back out. Both transactions happened off hours, moments f
        • What you saw there would clearly be a violation of several laws because employee wages owed are always the first thing handed out when a company goes bankrupt. Any company that stoops to that level is already morally bankrupt and the financial bankruptcy can't be far behind.
    • Well, hell, I demand to be paid in gold boullion!

      Makes it harder to fire me for sitting here reading /. all day than simply clicking the delete key in the HRMS software.

      • Makes it harder to fire me for sitting here reading /. all day than simply clicking the delete key in the HRMS software.

        I found it a lot easier to walk down to the office to get my paycheck than spending several hours over the course of a week dealing with the IT people just to be able to log in to the HRMS system.

        The nice thing about having the paper check is I gave it to an actual person at the bank, so they could tell that the information on the check was just spelled wrong. I have no idea what an aut
    • I don't get this, why should software from Peoplesoft develope a problem if a hostile takeover bid from Oracle for the company came one step further?
      I mean how are the two things related in any way? And if they are not, why was it moderated up?
    • It's a good thing I still demand my paychecks printed on a piece of paper in an envelope I can carry to the bank myself.

      My question would be if it isnt handling payroll/hr as it should be, Is what printed out on a paper check what it should be? The company that does our payroll uses peoplesoft and I check the direct deposit statement very carefully every pay period.
    • Payroll processing in the US and Canada is relatively complex (not to mention Europe). Mistakes happen on a regular bases due to no fault of the payroll processing software. PeopleSoft has one of the most mature Payroll processing engines on the market.

      Other than operator error (miskeying, employee misunderstanding of withholding, etc...) errors happen because all 50 states are constantly changing their tax laws and rates, forcing PeopleSoft to issue upwards of 6-10 updates to their payroll product every

  • well (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nial-in-a-box ( 588883 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:11AM (#10211237) Homepage
    Anything that kills PeopleSoft is a good thing. I don't care how many people use it or how well it may work for some people, it is the Windows of its market (i.e. poorly made, difficult to support, and unreliable as hell, especially when not configured perfectly).

    • Re:well (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This was moderated 'Funny', but there are many taxpayers and students out there who will feel it should have been 'Informative'.

    • Re:well (Score:3, Funny)

      by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 )
      Anything that kills PeopleSoft is a good thing.

      Trust me, the rumors I hear regarind Oracle applications say that their apps all that much better than PeopleSoft. In fact, some people think they are worse. If these rumors are true, then this potential takeover would result in one poorly made software system replacing another poorly made software system.

      • Ugh. And I did preview that before I submitted it. What I meant to say was:

        Trust me, the rumors I hear regardinG Oracle applications say that their apps AREN'T all that much better than PeopleSoft'S.

        Maybe I should go get another cup of coffee. It is obvious that I am not able to either type or proofread properly.

      • What I'm mainly getting at is I hope that this can be a nail in the coffin of proprietary, monolithic data management systems. Frankly, I do not know all that is required with setting up such systems, but if I was in the position to make a decision about it and be responsible for critical data for, say, students at a large university, the last place I would look would be Oracle/PeopleSoft. I have worked with both before, and I am now a client user for both and frankly they suck. I don't know if the troub

        • Re:well (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I hate to burst your bubble, but it will never happen. Monolithic systems are that way for a reason (to leverage all the information in all the various integrated pieces for some advantage) and they are not tied to Microsoft. These systems are the way that they are because that is what is necessary. As a user, you tend to loose sight of the scope of these systems because you see such a small part of them. I do support for PeopleSoft on Oracle for a large consulting company, so I have a little insight he

      • Re:well (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Undertaker43017 ( 586306 )
        Sadly most of the choices in large ERP/OSS software are poor.

        IMHO, it's because most of them are old, complex and the architectures have not been updated.

        • It's a combination of a few factors: (this is from my work implementing SAP and Oracle)
          1. They're not designed with an end user in mind - they're designed to make the accounting package interact with every other bolt-on module. What occurs is a programmer with no idea how to, say, plan a line is put in charge of developing all the forms and interfaces for that type of job.
          2. Kruft/feature creep - Customer A wants a feature to shine the shoes of his CEO and accompanying sycophants. Oracle says "ok" and imple
          • "Generalization of businesses - the underlying assumption of ANY ERP is most of the business processes that will be tracked/automated/integrated are generic and standard to a business and will only require modest tweaking. This is the most blatant of lies the ERP vendors make (niche players excluded). Overgeneralization forces almost a reinvention of the wheel - either changing processes or changing the program. Guess which one happens most ;)"

            For years I have thought this is the biggest problems of large
            • You're 50% correct. ;)
              A small start-up type is better off homegrowing IMO. Your system is going to do exactly what you want and you're going to be more flexible than with a standard prohibitively expensive system.
          • Ever hear of Datatel's Colleague? It's THE WORST of any ERP solution. Guaranteed. It was based on Unidata (ICK!) many a years ago and now they have released a solution that works with Oracle......except it still needs Unidata and some software they wrote to translate their proprietary programming language (Envision) to be able to use Oracle tables. Then they have messes like multivalued fields and weird ass crap and so much stuff the SA has to try to fit in in a 2-4 hour outage window jsut to keep the d
            • (total aside - Buckeyes sux0r! :P )

              "Is ERP just so new that it's immature? Or is it that different companies or schools are just so different that it's impossible to shoehorn them into a out of the box product like Peoplesoft???"

              Yes. There's three main issues.
              ERP is immature (sort of, the chunky sexy name ERP is newer than the concept of integrated business processes)
              Companies are different and are more willing to invest money in software change rather than process change - many non-tech companies s

    • I used to work in a company branch which repackaged software (with a custom packager) after testing it against existing base apps. For example, if a new PeopleSoft application was coming in, we had images of the 4-5 most common desktops/hardware, and the app would be installed on all. Any existing apps breaking or errors in the new app were to be noted and hopefully fixed. This would be back in the win9x days, so DLL-hell was still common.

      Of all the culprits for incompatability or causing problems, People
      • Current versions of PeopleSoft don't require a client install of any kind. All you need is a web browser. It's completely web-based. I've logged in and navigated PeopleSoft Financials with my Sharp Zaurus running Opera.

        Bad implementations result in black eyes for PeopleSoft. I guess I'm in a good shop. We have Financials, HCM, EPM, etc and everyone is happy for the most part. The technology is far ahead of Oracle and SAP (AFAIK, I admit that I'm not as familiar with their products).

        When Oracle first

    • If it's not configured properly, it's going to be bad. That applies to whatever package you implement, regardless if it is Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP etc.. My experience has been that the vast majority of problems with ERP software are either configuration problems or customizations that don't work and play nice with the rest of the software.

  • while I do not want to see Oracle get People Soft, (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:11AM (#10211238) Journal
    it struck me odd that this admin all but drop the MS case, but wase persuing this one. Too be honest, the admin had little to no chance of winning it, as SAP is the big boy and MS is looming.

    But I have wondering why they did persue this one? hummm. payoffs anybody?

  • not out of the woods (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:16AM (#10211268)
    First point is that this has nothing to do with databases. It is to do with ERP apps of which there are currently 3 major players: SAP, Oracle and Peoplesoft. If Oracle is successful there will be two. Hard to see how this is not less competition, though SAP is so much the market leader that the Oralce/Peoplesoft combined company might be useful to their customers. Its worth noting that Oracle still faces an EU investigation into the bid and, if successful, will to overcome an implacably hostile Peoplesoft board, oh, and gain the support of shareholders for its $7.7bn bid. Also the DoJ has 60 days to appeal Judge Walker's decision.

    • Re:not out of the woods (Score:5, Informative)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:31AM (#10211342)
      "3 major players"... but there are a ton of industry-specific ERP-ish systems out there for every industry you can think of ranging from office supply sellers to construction project managers. Also, there's plenty of business out there who skip over the full marketplace and hire a programmer to make their own resource tracking program using tools as simple as Microsoft Access which works great for a truely small business even though its scalablity is limited.

      I agree with the judge here... the ERP software field is filled with players small and large. There's no monopoly risk in letting Oracle and PeopleSoft merge... just like there's far more places that sell hambugers than McDonald's and Burger King. Just because their two of the biggest, doesn't make a merger that creates a monopoly possible.

      • Re:not out of the woods (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:44AM (#10211403) Homepage
        ERP systems are far less interchangeable than low quality hamburgers. Claiming that there are hundreds of Lilluputians in the market does nothing to counter the problem of market dominance by a few small players.

        The Judge's reasoning would only work if someone could point to a 4th player willing, ready and able to take up the slack when the #3 player sabotages the #1 player.
        • Why does player #4 need to be a single entity? Can't the large number of small players be thought of as that player ready to asorb the slack?
          • I totally agree. I work for one of those small players, and we are very glad to see this end quickly (we were pissed that our money was being used to fight this in the first place).

            Even beyond the small players, MS is in this market now, and while they are not a big ERP player today, MS doesn't get into a market that it doesn't want to dominate. MS could easily be considered a viable #4.
          • Why does player #4 need to be a single entity? Can't the large number of small players be thought of as that player ready to asorb the slack?
            Businesses don't work like that. They simply won't let the smaller players on the shortlist when selecting their ERP software. Fact is, they need to see a substantial support organization backing the package to give them confidence that the small to medium sized fortune they're about to invest isn't going to be wasted.
            • Among the field of smaller lesser-known ERP programs that are customized for a specific industry, there is most likely only one or two vendors that match the a specific business's needs. However, those programs come with the appropriate support organization... not as large as the generalists, but that also means you can be known on a first name basis with the support reps and know who you're dealing with.
          • Name one segment of the software market where things worked out like that.

            Software is not a commodity. Software cannot be compared to a slab of cow. It's absurd to even try.
        • >> ERP systems are far less interchangeable than low quality hamburgers

          mmm, ERP systems... Cash cows of the 90s...
          There is a large company in the DFW area that was changing ERP systems like gloves: 3 in 4 years. People were making fortune contracting there. Meanwhile , their real, day-to-day business software was and still is a combo of 20 yo Cobol program and DCL script.

        • MS has entered the Market. This means there will only be one in a few years unless the opposition acts now to counteract a 50 billion dollar warchest.
    • Interesting to hear you distill the players to just those three mentioned above. I would agree with you on the level of "Tier 1" solutions, but those are companies that are so large that I felt compelled to chime in here.

      I'm a manager of a mid-sized company that has been courting Oracle, Microsoft, and one other vendor. We had initially contacted SAP as well, but they totally dropped the ball and never maintained contact.

      Oracle's definitely pushing for our business, though the other two are working hard a

  • Be interesting to see if they actually acquire now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by base3 ( 539820 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @07:24AM (#10211310)
    Oracle's real interest was making sure that PeopleSoft didn't acquire J.D. Edwards--but Oracle failed in that endeavor. I don't think Oracle actually wants to buy PeopleSoft, but is now forced to "go through the motions," lest they be caught in their act of blatant tortious interference in trying to sabotage the Edwards deal. My guess is that Oracle will lowball the offer and now allow the issue to die. This doesn't even consider the poison pill provisions allowing PeopleSoft clients refunds if Oracle buys PeopleSoft.

  • MS = competitor? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does anyone find it odd that Microsoft, arguably the largest company seeking to gain and/or retain a monopoly in every market they have ever been in, would be listed as "competition". I'm not having an issue with the change of opinions on Oracle, but MS doesn't seem to be a good example of competition. The fact that they are in the market just tells me there needs to be more competition so they can't simply concentrate on destroying their last big competitor. That's like saying that in 1985 MCI and Spri
    • Perhaps it is thought that oracle and peoplesoft individualy will be subject to defeat in detail, where the combined companies would be able to put up more of a fight.

      I dont know. Just a thought that occured to me.

  • Karma-whoring (Score:4, Informative)

    by genixia ( 220387 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @08:11AM (#10211578)
    Registration free story is available from the BBC. [bbc.co.uk]
  • ...but as somebody who works with both Oracle and PeopleSoft Financials, I always thought that, while Oracle's application is very flexible, it was cumbersome to use. PeopleSoft's application is very easy to use, but is a little more rigid, and customization takes a bit of work. If I were to choose between the two, I would choose PeopleSoft's application over Oracle's.

    My hope is the combination of the two applications into a single application that takes the strength of both worlds. However, I still be

  • Maybe Oracle will buy PeopleSoft and transition all users to their own platform.

    /I can dream, can't I?

    • Maybe Oracle will buy PeopleSoft and transition all users to their own platform.

      If by "own platform" you mean an Oracle database, that wouldn't be necessary. Most PeopleSoft customers already run the application on a backend Oracle database. PeopleSoft can also run on SQL Server and DB2. However, Oracle is really the main player.

      If you mean that Oracle will kill off PeopleSoft as an application and transition people to the Oracle application suite, then you're totally correct. Oracle has already said tha

  • Clarification? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr. Bad Example ( 31092 ) on Friday September 10, 2004 @10:31AM (#10213068) Homepage
    Could someone more business-savvy than I am (which includes most animals with at least a notochord) explain "hostile bidding" to me? Right now I have this image in my head of Larry Ellison saying "I'll give you a hundred million dollars, motherfucker", and that can't be right.

    • Re:Clarification? hostile bidding (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hostile bidding, as I understand it, is when an entity (Oracle, in this case) places a bid for a controlling interest in another company. If 50% + 1 share of PeopleSoft is publicly traded, it is susceptible to a hostile takeover as someone could simply buy up all the shares that are out there and thus own a controlling interest.

      Now, some shares are not for sale, and when a company IPOs usually the owners keep a lot of their stock in their personal coffers (not for sale or waaay too expensive) so usually th

  • From the Trenches (Score:3, Informative)

    by Prien715 ( 251944 ) <agnosticpope@gmail. c o m> on Friday September 10, 2004 @10:50AM (#10213276) Journal
    I work for state HR (everyone here does the tech side of things). We use PeopleSoft and Oracle. Everyone here is also adamantly against the merger.

    First, Oracle's ERP software sucks a lot. We worry PS will die (be swallowed) and be forced to use inferior tools.

    Second, we have our choice of DBs right now. We may choose Oracle, but we could choose DB2 as well. If the conditions were to change (software price/quality/etc) we could change. We like having that freedom. I doubt PS post-Oracle would release a DB agnostic product.
  • I don't know what effect this will have on PeopleSoft, but I really hope it will improve this monstrosity called QUEST [uwaterloo.ca] for the University of Waterloo [uwaterloo.ca].

    For those who don't know about QUEST ( which is probably everyone here ), it's a very unstable, slow and annoying system for signing up for courses, reviewing marks, checking your account balance, etc. The damn thing doesn't work half the time, and the processes of adding/dropping/swapping a class is incredibly irritating.

    Also, do any other Universities

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