PeopleSoft Goes To Oracle 216
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Refunds??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Poison pills are almost never in the stockholder's best interest - they're mainly used by entrenched boards and management who see their jobs threathened by any takeover, be it "hostile" or "friendly".
Since Oracle launched a lawsuit challenging that particular little gem, I think it's unlikely that anyone can take advantage of it before Oracle gains operational control and c
Re:Refunds??? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, poison pills are OK, but labor unions are not.
Guess it depends on whos job is threatened.
Re:Refunds??? (Score:2)
Re:Refunds??? (Score:4, Informative)
When Oracle first announced it was to acquire PeopleSoft, it said it would close it down. Big corporate customers literally could not buy PeopleSoft software with the sword of "no support" hanging over them. With the product roadmap taken away, they delayed purchasing or went to SAP [sap.com].
PeopleSoft was left with a dilemma, offer some reassurance to customers who wanted to buy its software or watch sales wither. (In which case, Oracle would probably have withdrawn its bid having seen a competitor's sales collapse.)
We may not like the way PeopleSoft tried to evade Oracle's clutches, but - as far as customer assurance went - it really had no choice, either for its shareholders or its customers.
Disclaimer: up until August '04, I was a stock analyst advising fund managers on the software industry.
Re:Refunds??? (Score:3, Informative)
This is one of the widely curculated lies about the whole case. At no time did Oracle say that it will do that. What happened is that right after the bid, so called journalists started to speculate that Oracle would do that and portrayed these speculations as something Oracle said. Right the next week these were refuted by a reiteration from Oracle that the company would continue development of PeopleSoft products and
Re:Refunds??? (Score:2)
If the story that Oracle had planned to buy PeopleSoft in order to discontinue their products really is a myth, journalists and analysts can't take all the blame. Craig Conway of PeopleSoft also did his part to encourage people to believe that was Ellison's goal. [computerworld.com]
Re:Refunds??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Refunds??? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Refunds??? (Score:2)
I was an employee of Pharmacia & Upjohn which became Pharmacia and finnally became Pfizer. Our "poison pill" was that if you were laid off (they insisted on using the term "Releasing Your Potential") due to a change in control you would recive a minimum of 6 months of salary in one lump sum. People with the company more then 5 years could get upwards of 3 years worth of pay in some instances. So, we all felt safe but ultimatly I, along with several th
many mergers/acquistions in the news today (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:many mergers/acquistions in the news today (Score:4, Funny)
Re:many mergers/acquistions in the news today (Score:2)
/adopts stentorian Discovery Channel announcer's voice
When Good Mergers Go Bad.
Re:many mergers/acquistions in the news today (Score:2)
incorrect economic analysis. (Score:2, Interesting)
you are thinking of horizontal mergers. with the exception of JnJ- Guidant, and Sprint-Nextel (which i know little about), none of those listed are horizontal.
Re:incorrect economic analysis. (Score:2)
Re:incorrect economic analysis. (Score:2, Informative)
Horizontal: Two large companies that already do similar things merge. Such as the Compaq/HP merger.
Re:incorrect economic analysis. (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:incorrect economic analysis. (Score:2)
Re:incorrect economic analysis. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:incorrect economic analysis. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:incorrect economic analysis. (Score:2)
Oracle and Peoplesoft compete directly to provide ERP systems. Are in fact numbers 2 and 3 in this space. How is this arguably vertical?
Make that 5 out of 5 (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Make that 5 out of 5 (Score:2)
a) American Beer stops tasting like donkey piss.
or
b) Canadian Beer starts tasting like donkey piss.
Given that Labatts is still Canadian, and makes a pretty good beer, I'd wager that a is more likely than b, however anything's possible I suppose.
Re:many mergers/acquistions in the news today (Score:2)
Whether or not this is good news for the average consumer remains to be seen. The software market is going to continue to get tighter. This is a complete SWAG based on nothing current, but I wouldn't be surprised if Sybase was the next big take-over target.
The cell phone market is going to stay competitive for a while with Sprint
Re:many mergers/acquistions in the news today (Score:2)
I agree that it's bad for consumers. If it's good for the companies has yet to be seen.
Business Plan (Score:2)
Rus
This is going to be painful (Score:3, Insightful)
This is going to suck big time.
open source (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe your company and a bunch of other companies should get together and start working on an open source version of PeopleSoft's software. The go
Re:open source (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, I forgot, I'm supposed to write it myself. My stupid.
Re:open source (Score:2)
Oh, I forgot, I'm supposed to write it myself. My stupid.
Attitudes like this are exactly why no open source version exists. There is quite a bit of value in writing an open source solution, espessially if your primary business is not software development. Hiring a couple of in-house programmers for a year to do development is probably not much more expensive (perhaps even cheape
Re:open source (Score:2)
There is some truth to this statement though. If company A hires me to write some software for them that gives them a competitive advantage why would they want to release it as open source? Company A footed the bill for development, so they reap the rewards. What is the arugment for releasing the software as open source so that competitors B, C, etc... get to use the software for free?
Re:open source (Score:3, Interesting)
The point is that you are in the business of maximizing the returns for your stockholders, not trying to punish the stockholders of your competitors. If you can incre
Re:open source (Score:2)
This is not necessarily true- if they never distribute the software, they are under no obligations to share any changes that they made to the software. You can modify and use GPL'd software to your hearts content without sharing a thing. The only time you are obligated to make any changes you have made to the
Re:open source (Score:2)
Except that this argument doesn't hold because:
a) They end up with a version that cannot be distributed. This may work fine
Re:open source (Score:2)
Re:open source (Score:2)
And eveything new is just kludged on top of this...granted, has been a few years since I worked with PS...(approx. 3+)...but, that was the case then...
Re:open source (Score:2, Insightful)
So it's not a "write it once, use everywhere" piece of software like the Linux kernel. Plus, a lot of companies who buy this stuff are not software experts - that's not what their business does. So writing their own solution is not an attractive o
Re:open source (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:open source (Score:3, Informative)
Hiring a couple of in-house programmers for a year will get you jack squat progress towards a full-blown home-rolled ERP system.
If I had mod points, I'd give you a +1 insightful.
As for an example, where I'm currently working uses Oracle's E-Business suit. There are 4 full-time DBA's, and about 20 full-time developers.
What do these people do? Create new wizz-bang system? No. Everyone is either involved in keeping things running, or making minor modifications or additions to the existing syste
You know (Score:2)
And I totally agree.
Re:open source (Score:3, Informative)
If they get bought out and the shut down, they don't take the software with them.
If their top talent starts feeling that corporate management is taking development in the wrong direction - they can quit and start their own company to go in the right direction.
Well, sorta... It's possible a few interprising folks could take the software from the defunct "company" and start over. It's pos
Re:open source (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:open source (Score:2)
First of all, SAP is mostly a marketing construct. If you look at their higher education product, for example, three out of the five modules already have open source implementations.
Second, SAP has a bunch of big problems: they are stuck with cumbersome technology for various reasons and their customers have big scalability demands. A low-end FOSS implementation can be kept much simpler and be based on platforms that make implementations much eas
that's not how OSS works (Score:2)
That's not how OSS works.
How it works is that some small-to-medium company says "we only need a simple ERP system and we are tired of paying big bucks or getting jerked around by our vendor, we can so something simple ourselves". Then, that company discovers that maintenance gets cheaper when they release it open source. Then, other companies start adding features.
Programmers do the wor
Re:open source (Score:2)
Neither can I. But companies like Oracle or PeopleSoft are eating into the profits of small companies that can barely afford them and that don't need something as big anyway.
So, small companies sooner or later will ask their own, paid employees to develop bits and pieces of such software. It won't be very scalable or featureful, but it will be good enough for many companies with simple needs. Then, they'll recognize that it
Re:open source (Score:2)
Not that bad (Score:2)
Best Bet (Score:2)
Most likely oracle will let people migrate to what ever they come up with when the 2 products are merged. And most likely most will choose that route.
Not that i like oracles products, but once you spend several million to get PS running, you really dont have much of a choice realistically..
Maybe NOT so painful for us dweebs (Score:2)
-- Old Chinese proverb
Maybe it won't suck. Keep in mind that there's going to be turmoil, and turmoil creates opportunities for the geeks who maintain these systems (I assume that you're one of the above, since you're posting on Slashdot).
Maybe you'll have to learn Oracle. Maybe there'll be massive retraining. Maybe you'll have to rip everything out and start over. This would be a good time to ask for a raise.
The consulting gravy
Same here but I can't wait (Score:2)
Re:This is going to be painful (Score:2)
I'm in the same boat.
The story I'm referencing is as follows (the comment comes about half way down the article, starting with "In its statement Oracle moved":
Yahoo News [yahoo.com]
Re:This is going to be painful (Score:2)
What about existing PeopleSoft customers? (Score:3, Informative)
I checked Oracle's web site. [oracle.com] It appears that existing PeopleSoft customers have some good news out of this. After having invested millions of dollars on PeopleSoft, they won't have to immediately migrate to another ERP system:
We intend to enhance PeopleSoft 8 and develop a PeopleSoft 9 and enhance a JD Edwards 5 and develop a JD Edwards 6. We intend to immediately extend and improve support for existing JD Edwards and PeopleSoft customers worldwide.Of course, whether or not PeopleSoft version 9 is an improvement over PeopleSoft version 8 depends on how much you love your existing ERP system. Of course, I don't see anything on whether or not the new PeopleSoft version 9 will run on DB2 or SQL Server.
Re:What about existing PeopleSoft customers? (Score:2)
The question is; will Oracle keep a lot of the PeopleSoft support staff and development staff or will they cut them loose? We've had problems in the past finding good GSC analysts for tech cases and when we find a tech who really knows the system we keep going back to them.
Also
Re:What about existing PeopleSoft customers? (Score:2)
Re:What about existing PeopleSoft customers? (Score:2)
You found a good GSC analyst? Wow, can I get their e-mail address? I haven't found a good one yet.
If they cut a large portion of the development staff how long will it take Oracle to get their developers up to speed on the mess of PeopleCode, App Engine code and COBOL that makes PeopleSoft run?
Not to make you feel worse, but from what I have heard, Oracle Applications do not have a great reputation. Rumor has it that they are even
Re:What about existing PeopleSoft customers? (Score:3, Informative)
My guess is that Oracle will do to PeopleSoft the same thing they did (are doing) to RDB.
For those who are too young to remember, once upon a time, there was a company known as DEC, and they had a database which ran on their VAX hardware called RDB, and it was way ahead of everyone esle in terms of being a multi-dimensional database - much the same way their clustering technology was so advanced that others are only now catching
Re:What about existing PeopleSoft customers? (Score:2)
Uh, moderators, why am I being moderated as "flamebait"? I was commenting on MY OWN COMMENT! I replied to myself.
Re:What about existing PeopleSoft customers? (Score:2)
Look, if you're going to pick fights with yourself, please take it outside!
What about the poison pill? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What about the poison pill? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What about the poison pill? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, what happens to the Peoplesoft-IBM Alliance? (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Re:So, what happens to the Peoplesoft-IBM Alliance (Score:3, Insightful)
The press release says nothing about PSFT (now ORCL) having to promote DB2. It's IBM that's promoting DB2 as the database of choice for PSFT. I highly doubt that the contract says anything about PSFT promoting DB2. At best, it might specify that PSFT has to remain compatible with DB2 for a specified period of time, but even that's unlikely. I'd bet that
Great! (Score:2, Funny)
Our company has been eagerly waiting for this merger. We completed a merger ourselves, last year.
It gave us the benefit of having both Oracle and PeopleSoft experts/consultants.
How many people work in a shop, that primarily uses Oracle? We use Oracle for the database, JDeveloper for the IDE (working on getting us to switch to Eclipse), Oracle Forms and now Oracle Portal.
I'm in charge of getting our Java environment up and running and moving us from PHP web application development, to Java. PHP
Re:Great! (Score:2)
you can't get away! (Score:3, Funny)
Not final? (Score:2)
Re:Not final? (Score:3, Informative)
Just another MBA student passing through.
Re:Not final? (Score:2)
Assumed some what now??
Whoops, forgot (Score:3, Insightful)
Damn shame. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Couldn't be any worse (Score:3, Informative)
There have also been cases where students didn't get their loan checks and I have experienced numerous times when the system, even when not under heavy load, has said i am not logged in right in the middle of doing something or said i didn't have permission to access something even though it is my records and the classes I am teaching as a grad student.
To top it all off, it is a web portal with a million links and buttons and tabs just like the web portals back in '99 that were really cool and then crashed and burned.
I can't imagine that Oracle could make things any worse.
Re:Couldn't be any worse (Score:2)
Re:Couldn't be any worse (Score:2)
JDE World Software? (Score:2)
Hopefully we will ditch it soon, we are 4+ years in and only deployed at 2 out of 55 locations. Can you say "software doesn't fit us"?
I still see this buy as a customer buy.
zerg (Score:2)
Yes, yes, Microsoft, Google, blahblahblah. Are Microsoft, Google, et al pushing hardcore for a National ID card?
Pretty sad.. (Score:2)
* PeopleSoft will vanish, as Oracle wanted to eliminate their software.
* Thousands of employees here in the Bay Area will lose their jobs
* The PeopleSoft execs will walk away with "golden parachutes" valued in the millions.
* The shareholders will profit.
Employees lose. Customers lose. How lovely.
JdeAlumni.org (Score:2)
Competition (Score:3, Interesting)
Without competition, then there is no reason to get better and what sets the price.
Re:Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
SAP is the major competition in the ERP market. If I remember correctly, SAP has a larger customer base than Oracle and PeopleSoft combined.
Re:Competition (Score:3, Interesting)
You are. Oracle doesn't just make database software. Peoplesoft, SAP and Oracle make applications that run the back-office of many corporations (HR, Payroll, Accouting, Purchasing, etc.) This merger between Oracle and PeopleSoft impacts that applications. There are PeopleSoft applications that run on DB2, Oracle, Sybase and SQL Server. My guess is that at some point, Oracle will probably try to migrate all of the DB2, Sybase and SQL server customers to Oracle databases
Re:Competition (Score:2)
Re:Competition (Score:2)
That depends on how heavily the company is into PeopleSoft. If they are, for example, a school, and have their payroll, student information system, financial resource system, and grants package manager all on PeopleSoft, and PeopleSoft says that the next revision is only going to support Oracle, there's going to be a strong tendency to migrate (or add an O
Re:Competition (Score:2)
We already use Oracle for all our critical corporate systems on the DB side, including HR and Portal. So Oracle changing PeopleSoft to require an Oracle DB is not a big deal to us.
However, we did evaluate Oracles offerings for HR and Portal. Their HR system
Re:Competition (Score:2)
Yup...like the US/DoD investments in PS on DB2....I think the DIMHRS project, one of the largest computer projects in the world is going this route. Wonder what's going to happen to that....?
Re:Competition (Score:2)
That's one thought. Another thought is Oracle might try to migrate PeopleSoft customers to their Oracle Applications, in addition to migrating them to the Oracle Database.
From what I've seen of Oracle Applications, this would be a disaster. We attempted to migrate to Oracle Applications ( ver. 11.5.9 ) and ended up regressing to exisiting systems.
PeopleSoft might not
Re:Finally it happens (Score:2)
Re:Finally it happens (Score:2)
So now instead of having 2 companies doing business, we have 1, with the other guaranteed to be de
Remember PepsiCo & Kentucky Fried Chicken??? (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Re:Total value... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Total value... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Total value... (Score:2)
Indeed... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Employees? (Score:2)
This is just a guess on my part, but my gut feeling is that if you are a developer or software engineer working for PeopleSoft, you will be retained. If you are a PeopleSoft salesperson or a help desk employee, you better start looking for work.
Again, I am just guessing, since I am not an employee of either Oracle or PeopleSoft. I am basing my guess on what usually happens when IT companies merge. The developers and engineers
Re:Employees? (Score:2)
You forgot the big one - If you're a Board of Director, you better start looking for work. You don't think the Oracle will retain any Directors or VPS after dragging their feet so much making it being so difficult in merging.
Re:Employees? (Score:2)
Re:Employees? (Score:2)
Really? Then what's the point of the merger?
Note that by "support staff", I am not referring to software developers/engineers. Those positions will probably be retained, since Oracle will need their expertise to provide technical support to existing PeopleSoft customers. By Support Staff, I am referring to Administrative Assistants, Salespeople, Help Desk (Level 1) and maybe even some middle managers (as another poster pointed out).
PeopleSoft pr
Re:Employees? (Score:2)