Oracle's Hostile Takeover Bid For PeopleSoft 229
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."
if I had PeopleSoft stock (Score:2, Insightful)
how could anyone but a Zelot pass up that offer?
Re:if I had PeopleSoft stock (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems obvious that this offer was designed to intimidate PeopleSoft, disrupt the JD Edwards acquisition, and cast doubt on the future of PeopleSoft's products so that customer's would be less likely to buy.
Re:if I had PeopleSoft stock (Score:4, Informative)
it was around 10 dollors per share.
Some bad, some bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Bad - I don't know about you, but I was pretty pissed off when AT&T sold their cable unit to Comcast. I got a call one Saturday morning from some company that I have never personally signed up with, offering to change my channel selection for me. Imagine paying a few hundred thousand dollars after having chosen Peoplesoft, only to have Oracle call you up one day, and say, 'hey, you're our new customer!'
Good - I suppose this'll be good for Oracle, and maybe, at the end of the day, customers will win because of the integration of two not-too-bad software suites.
Re:Some bad, some bad (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Some bad, some bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Some bad, some bad (Score:2)
Re:Some bad, some bad (Score:2)
A-ha! What have you been reading - The Sun, Daily Mirror or Daily Express?
The top 2 or 3 serious broadsheets are on par with their American equivalents really, though granted, we don't get two editions a day.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Chandler (Score:2)
Calendaring, huh? Check out the site [osafoundation.org]. I'd say "calendaring" is understating the case. If it was just a calendaring system, it might have a chance. Instead, it seems to be going for "everything to everyone".
Re:Some bad, some bad (Score:3, Informative)
Ugh, I've been through that before. You buy an application from a smallish-midsize company, everything is great until they get bought by a giant. I experienced this four years ago and we are still on an unsupported version from before GigantiCo bought out our vendor of choice (and the new vendor offerings in our area are unsuitable). Hacking that poor old thing to keep it somewhat modern takes a fair amount of
Re:Some bad, some bad (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Some bad, some bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine paying a few hundred thousand dollars after having chosen Peoplesoft, only to have Oracle call you up one day, and say, 'hey, you're our new customer!'
Few hundred thousand? Talk about getting off light. We have a PeopleSoft implementation at our university that cost millions of dollars. Oracle has said that they will support existing PeopleSoft implementations but that they would kill PeopleSoft's product line. Fine by me. The education product line is a contorted piece of crap that is obviously HR software. Students have Employee IDs, their majors are Career Plans, and they have Program Actions. On top of that, seeing 6 figure consultants who fly to France on the weekends to get haircuts and buy cookware lose marketable job skills will make my day.
Re:Some bad, some bad (Score:2)
No, this will only disperse Oracle's energies. At this moment, Oracle should be focusing on creating a relational successor to its quasi-SQL engine, while upgrading the current offering to full SQL compliance. And it should have a credible free software story, not only "we run on Linux" -- they should run on the BSDs, on all platforms besides Intel, and be free software itself.
Oracle is the good guy (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oracle is the good guy (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, Ellison hates Gates. Its personal. So his support of Linux is very Slashdot-like.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Sun didn't "provide" StarOffice. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sun didn't "provide" StarOffice. (Score:2)
Sun only RELEASED THE SOURCE CODE to a fairly mature office suite. So yeah, I would say that Sun DID "provide" an open source office suite. Sorry, you're wrong.
http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2000-07/sun
What I neglected to mention... (Score:4, Informative)
Note that StarOffice, the full product, is not open source. It becomes open source (and integrated into Open Office) as features trickle into the public domain. Certain parts of StarOffice are tied up in IP restrictions. Fortunately they are not too important.
Re:Oracle is the good guy (Score:5, Interesting)
As for Microsoft bashing, the one reason I like Microsoft is because I know that if Oracle had the PC monopoly, things would be much, much worse. The reaon Oracle hates MS isn't because MS has a monopoly in the desktop OS, it is because MS ruined the nice little monopolies that the heavyweight database engines and mainframes had been working to perfect.
Re:Oracle is the good guy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Oracle is the good guy (Score:2)
Re:Oracle is the good guy (Score:5, Informative)
Oracle is using its cash on hand to cannibalize another company, steal its customer list, terminate development of its products, lay off 8000 tech workers, and turn Silicon Valley into even more of a smoking crater than they have already by outsourcing so much of their own development work to the Third World.
But they support Linux, so that's all OK! Oracle deserves our support!
Re:Oracle is the good guy (Score:2, Insightful)
...But in doing so Oracle manages to dominate the global multi-billion dollar CRM/ERP/Business Services market and increases in size, unseating the German company SAP and brings in millions to its
Re:Oracle is the good guy (Score:2)
It might be also a result of Oracle hiring recently [forbes.com] that a software analyst that watched PeopleSoft for Morgan Stanley for years.
It might be also result of a question in Larry's recent (2-4 weeks) performance, which touched the subject and reminded him that PeopleSoft refused his polite offer a year ago. :)
He does not like a 'no' for an answer.
Re:Oracle is the good guy (Score:2)
There is nothing going on in Pleasanton besides PeopleSoft. In fact, during the boom, people working here were buying homes in Pleasanton because they were cheap. It is within commuting distance. When people would say there's nothing going on in Pleasanton, they would reply "PeopleSoft!".
If Larry succeeds in destroying it, the laid off workers will be sending their resumes to firms in the East Bay and here. And I guess those
Re:Oracle is the good guy (Score:3, Insightful)
What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:5, Informative)
C//
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:5, Informative)
Oracle is trying to gain controlling interest in People Soft without the blessing of the board of directors of People Soft.
Proxies can be considered the voting rights of the stock.
Green mail is two things, primarly it would be People Soft bribing Oracle by buying back whatever shares Oracle accumulated -- giving Oracle a nice profit. Another form of Green Mail would be Oracle offering to buy huge blocks of stock off of People Soft stock holders at premium prices -- or simply gaining the proxy of them.
Poison Pills would be People Soft doing things to wreck the company and make it not so attractive as a takeover. Poison pills are usually a package of things they do. But the most adverse is to take out huge loans to buy back its own stock, Licensing company IP, and even awarding employees huge stock options. Basicaly they are throwing road blocks up and salting the earth.
White Knights are 3rd party corporations that come in and start buying People Soft and forcing the stock price up and making Oracle have to deal with two companies rather then just one. White Knights often really Gray Knights in disguise and are trying to make a profit too. Usually hostile takeovers are preceeded by months of slowly accumulating the stock of the takeover target. However there is a point, I think 5% at which the company has to notify the other company that they are targetted for aquisition. And I think the targetted company can get an injuntion against the other company enjoining them from buying more stock until the shareholders meet.
They are long and costly bloody battles that are usually done to scuttle or destroy the targetted company and the real benefit to the company initiating it is gaining market share, intellectual property, and other desired assets to the detriment of the targetted company.
Hey, I think we oughta code this up and make an mmorpg out of it!
Thats my bastardization of hostile takeovers.
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:2)
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:2)
Do I have total control in this case, able to do anything I would if I owned the company as a sole proprietorship?
Mostly (Score:5, Informative)
However, the answer to your question is mostly "yes". As 51% shareholder, you can typically completely replace the board of directors, because the board is elected by the shareholders (which means the owners) to represent their interests. New 51% owners usually want new representatives for their new interests, and the 49% owners can't raise the votes to stop them.
Then, since the CEO works for the board, the new board appoints a new CEO, who then replaces the senior execs, who all report to the CEO. They can then replace anyone below them who doesn't support the new regime.
I should add that the term "hostile takeover" is frequently just the viewpoint of the existing management. It's hostile to them because they may be thrown out by the new owners. It may not be hostile at all from the perspective of the existing small-scale shareholders -- the "outsiders".
Another possibility (in some cases) is that the old insiders club (the board and their pet CEO and his cronies) may have been milking the company for their own personal gain and there was nothing the small-scale shareholders could do about it. The big guys are making a pile of money off the company, while the company itself goes nowhere because it's being managed for the benefit of the top management, not the common shareholders.
Then a new team comes to town and offers a lot more money for common shares than the shareholders were going to get any other way. Whether the shareholders sell to the new guys or keep their now-higher-valued shares, the game has changed. Now, the old management tells everyone that the new guys are "hostile", but that may not be the way everyone sees it. They may end up more corrupt or incompetent than the old management, or they may be the first good thing for the common shareholders in years, but either way they'll be called "hostile" by the old management.
Incorrect definition of controlling interest (Score:2)
Actually 50% is not (strictly speaking) controlling interest. 50% +1 of voting shares is absolute control.
A controlling interest is a number of the VOTING shares that is enough to swing a vote in the direction you desire. That's why in most jurisdictions securities regulations require filing disclosures if you own >5% of the shares outstanding.
A controlling interest can be 30%, 20% 10% or even less.
It's governed by statistical models, probabilities and obviously the basic math. As long as another shar
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:2)
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:2)
Corporations are owned by shareholders. They are run day to day by managers supervised by a board of directors. A hostile takeover is one where the managers and the board of directors do not want to be bought but the purchaser buys them anyways, simply by buying shares from the shareholders.
Re:What exactly *IS* a hostile takeover anyways? (Score:3, Informative)
once you have more than 50% you control the company, so decided that it should merge with your company, or die, or whatever
Sounds like... (mildly OT) (Score:4, Interesting)
Read the pricewaterhouse coopers analysis [pwc.com]
and this other commentary [endlessrealms.com]
____________________________________
The Spiders are coming [e-sheep.com]
Back to the old "dot com" days again? (Score:2)
Quality of Work Environment at Oracle & People (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Quality of Work Environment at Oracle & Peo (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Quality of Work Environment at Oracle & Peo (Score:2)
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 2
Re:Quality of Work Environment at Oracle & Peo (Score:2)
Companies should always look for ways to be
Re:Quality of Work Environment at Oracle & Peo (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with you(ektor) 100%. It only costs $50 to start a corporation in Colorado. It may cost more or less in other states but not by much.
"We gladly accept a small reduction of economic expansion in exchange for a kindler and gentler American workplace and society."
If that's the case, start a corporation with the motto "Our first priority is kindler and gentler American workplace and society, not profits."
Sin
What immigrants? (Score:2)
I would try to count no-immigrants, but the rest of them all live in Indian reservations.
Well, I am glad that H1B stream is almost stopped (at first politically, only after - economically) and now the big business is outsourcing everything offshore. Now, people in India, China, Russia etc can appreciate America's kindness locally, with improvement of their local life without killing their personal culture (that what they would have to do otherwise in the culturele
Re:What immigrants? (Score:2)
Well, the Indians didn't exactly grow out of the ground, either - they probably arrived in America via Siberia and Alaska about 10000 years ago. But in this case, Europeans are immigrants in Europe, too, etc. The more correct definition is, that an immigrant is anyone living in a country where he wasn't born. A Mexican who has left Mexico for USA is an immigrant, but her child
Re:Quality of Work Environment at Oracle & Peo (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt this. Most immigrants in the past century have come because they could get a higher standard of living in America, or because they were seeking asylum from some sort of persecution. Compared to Western Europe, America is hardly kind and gentle. There are relatively few laws on employment here, which keeps minimum wage, job security, and workers' rights low. If you come to America for economic rea
How would this affect linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
A number of large businesses and private and public universities in the SF Bay Area have been installing Peoplesoft. The name "Peoplesoft" keeps coming up in discussions, and is usually accompanied by some cussing by the people who use it.
IIRC, UC Berkeley and Cal State Hayward are both moving from their inhouse solutions to Peoplesoft for the student record database (Causing many headaches among the students and staff). I've talked to some Unix admins at both places who griping about having to learn Windows and Peoplesoft.
These Universities are cutting budgets, but are still spending money on hardware, Windows licences, staff, training, training, and more training to accomodate the new Peoplesoft solution. The HR dept says this will save them lots of money.
But if Oracle takes ownership of Peoplesoft, will we see more Linux support in the future?
Re:How would this affect linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
As far as the cussing associated with PeopleSoft, I am very sympathetic.
The implementation makes all the difference... Both can be great application, or huge headaches depending on how they are done.
Re:How would this affect linux? (Score:2)
Larry Ellison hates Bill Gates and probably sees himself as some ancient-samuari whose job it is to vanquish Gates. Support for Linux means that someone who has a PC doesn't have to run it on Windows now.
It may even spur on the forthcoming peoplesoft Linux support.
Re:How would this affect linux? (Score:2)
Sorry.
PSFT offers its apps suite on Linux (albeit very recently). Oracle, AFAIK, does not. SAP does. JD Edwards does not.
Open source is not a real issue. Business applications (aka enterprise applications) are built over a long period by people with intimate business experience. Or at least experience they think is intimate with business.
There is little technical challenge associated with writing an accounts recievable package. But, in theory at least, understaning AR (i.e. being an accountant) is im
Re:How would this affect linux? (Score:2)
A couple of years ago, I was contracting for a mining research center which shall remain nameless, and they were blessed (read: bent over and took one for the team) with a peoplesoft setup forced from the head office.
"Some cussing" does not start to describe some of
Impact on SAP/MySQL deal (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Impact on SAP/MySQL deal (Score:2)
Yeah, except Oracle is already a major player in this market.
Re:Impact on SAP/MySQL deal (Score:2)
Re:Impact on SAP/MySQL deal (Score:2)
Re:Impact on SAP/MySQL deal (Score:2)
Well, MySQL is a triple-threat -- simplicity, stability, speed. It's easier than Oracle, it "just works" and keeps working, and it returns results just as fast as Oracle does, even under heavy load. We recently had MySQL processing 169 queries per second (Sun E450, running Apache, MySQL, and PHP) during our peak time, and while the site was slower than off-peak times, it was still responsive and enjoyable to use. Some people just don't need the high-end features -- or more to the
Re:Impact on SAP/MySQL deal (Score:2)
Our website run on MS SQL Server and processes upto 5000 queries/sec at peak time and db server isn't even stressed.
CPU usuage is around 20% on the 4-proc 1GB mem 700MHz pentium 3 server.
10% of queries are inserts and updates and the rests are just selects with joins to two or three tables.
What kind of queries are you running?
Re:Impact on SAP/MySQL deal (Score:2)
You make it sound like you have a server dedicated to MS SQL Server. I don't -- I've got Apache and PHP on the same server, and all apps run & handle load on the same box. So this may be an apples/oranges comparison. However, if your box is also running Apache or IIS, and also makes heavy use of PHP or ASP, then I would like to meet you and have you give me a tour of this server duri
Re:Impact on SAP/MySQL deal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Impact on SAP/MySQL deal (Score:2)
I never said your needs or anyone else's needs didn't exist, only that they don't exist to the exclusion of everything else.
One of
Re:Impact on SAP/MySQL deal (Score:2)
Sure it can be done with MySQL. Amazon is selling the MySQL Transactions and Replication Handbook [amazon.co.uk] if you'd like to read up on it.
Sounds like you might want to take your own advice.
Would Reduce Our Choices By One (Score:3, Interesting)
Or, you could purchase from Oracle, Peoplesoft. Datatel, SCT, etc, gamble a lot of money, maybe discover you have to change your business processes to fit the software, and in a couple of years you may be
I worry that if Oracle buys Peoplesoft, we lose a choice, such as it is. It's already a complex dynamic, and this may make the choices a bit more narrow.
Company for Sale (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no sympathy for companies that want to be publicly traded corporations but then pretend that they're a private firm.
Better not wake the Giant. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Better not wake the Giant. (Score:2)
Re:Better not wake the Giant. (Score:2)
Consolidation of bad software? (Score:5, Interesting)
At two previous jobs I used PeopleSoft's suite and found it lacking. At one I did a bit of reverse engineering on the database, and I had perl scripts generating better reports than their $x million software, which also crashed daily. (Nobody seemed to know exactly what x was, but afaict everybody who had to do with the decision to use PeopleSoft no longer worked there. Which might tell you something.) Oh, and for all the article's 'PeopleSoft is (used to be) a caring company' lines, I can assure you that once they have your money they don't care the slightest about their customers, even when you're still paying for service.
On the other hand, during that same period, I talked to a number of people about Oracle's suite (Oracle E-Business Suite, OEBS) as a potential replacement. There are lots of sites talking about all the money and time people save using OEBS, just as there are for PeopleSoft. But every person I actually talked to said, essentially, that it was crap and they regretted it, but don't tell anyone.
So, I guess my point is that both of them are basically crap software that got their reputation because no public company would ever admit to their shareholders that their well-researched software decision was a multi-million dollar disaster. So they deserve each other.
And on that note, I think I'm going to post this anonymously, since even though it's all true libel suites are time consuming.
Re:Consolidation of bad software? (Score:2, Insightful)
As for the quality of the apps, I've learned two important things:
1. There's no magic bullet. Don't expect a generic business system solve your needs.
2. Consultants are evil (usually). Don't let consultants completel
Re:Consolidation of bad software? (Score:2)
I spent 6 years working on and around Oracle 10.6 - 11i on HPUX. Since then I've spent 2.5 years doing essentially the same with/for J.D. Edwards OneWorld on iSeries (AS/400).
It's all crap. However, it's the best available crap. The fact is that the products in this market are all infants. They represent the best of what is currently possible in large scale (big understatement there
Re:Consolidation of bad software? (Score:2)
While on a business trip to Orange County I ran into a "Peoplesoft struggles" newspaper article that detailed some horror stories I'd heard about Peoplesoft at the University of Minnesota and other Big 10 schools.
Essentially the University and the other schools were teaming up to tell Peoplesoft that it didn't work, they wouldn't
I am (Score:5, Informative)
Acquiring JD Edwards is going to make us #2 in the field, and Oracle #3, which is why Ellison wants to take us over, kill our product, and terminate all of our jobs.
Craig Conway (PeopleSoft CEO) has already told all of us that he won't let "Ellison kill PeopleSoft".
On top of all that, the offer made to PeopleSoft by Oracle per share is now lower than the price it's trading at. Take that into account, plus what the company will be worth after acquiring J.D. Edwards, and Oracle won't be able to convince the shareholders to go along with it.
Re:I am (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it's out of your control. Even Craig Conway has limited control over what will happen, the choice belongs to the stockholders. If Oracle can buy > 50% of the stock, Conway is gone.
But good luck to you.
Actually. (Score:5, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP please (Score:2)
Both Companies Products suck (Score:5, Insightful)
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 )
First impressions last.. (Score:2)
It left a really bad taste in my mouth. Id have not been so upset if it wasnt for their attitude after we had issues.
Too bad peoplesoft ( current project ) doesnt taste much better.
What I can say is.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Hopefully this will go through. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hopefully this will go through. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hopefully this will go through. (Score:2)
Don't feel sorry for PeopleSoft or its CEO (Score:2)
If Oracle wins they will lose... (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Hostles (Score:2)
I did not even realize PeopleSoft ran hostles, yet alone had 5.1 billion dollars worth of them!
Re:$5.1bn ? (Score:5, Informative)
In enterprise, "Oracle" is like "Xerox" or "Kleenex" -- it's the apps, the engine is invisible. If Peoplesoft bought J.D. Edwards, they'd challenge Oracle on that level.
If Microsoft had any sense they'd sell the biz apps. The DB is irrelevant -- it's the schemas that people buy.
Re:$5.1bn ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:$5.1bn ? (Score:3, Interesting)
They do http://microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions/ [microsoft.com]
Microsoft just got in the CRM market recently, which had PeopleSoft really pissed. I believed they made a statement concerning pushing other platforms or something.
To be honest, I have to say, I'm with Microsoft on this one. CRM/ERP companies have been charging whatever they feel like for software and training for a while now. Companies like
Re:$5.1bn ? (Score:2)
Re:$5.1bn ? (Score:2)
Re:$5.1bn ? (Score:2)
Re:$5.1bn ? (Score:3, Informative)
And Microsoft, Sun and Apple basically sell operating systems.
A relational databases on steroids can be very valuable. Almost every large profitable computer company uses a relational database on their back end.
It is not uncommon for a small business to pay $50,000 for an Oracle setup.
There are many mid-to-large organizations who have Oracle setups that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, running on large d
Re:$5.1bn ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.