OK, I was going to write this whole PeopleSoft/Oracle/JD Edwards thing as some sort of bizarre fairy tale with PeopleSoft as a lovely maiden, JD Edwards as a strapping suitor and Oracle as a devilish duke looking to separate the woo star-crossed lovers and make the maiden his own. But, as I began to write, I realized that my metaphor would better be suited to a Dallas/Knot’s Landing sort of thing. And I never watched those shows, so I’m useless there.
The point, though, is that this whole debacle too closely resembles the script to a bad 80s prime-time soap opera. For those not in the know, PeopleSoft, helmed by a former Oracle executive, sought recently to purchase and merge with JD Edwards, which is strong in manufacturing process support. This addition to PeopleSoft would not only make them a major contender in a bevy of new markets, it would help them out of the slump most ERP companies are realizing in the days of the dotcom bust. As more companies trim their budgets, there’s less of a demand for huge processing and memory intensive enterprise software. But the middle range market is opening up nicely, which is where players like Oracle and Microsoft are setting their sights.
Well, long story short, Oracle made an unexpected bid to buy PeopleSoft before they had a chance to ink the deal with JD Edwards. PeopleSoft’s investors rejected the first bid but indicated that they’d be open to a larger sum of money. Oracle returned with a 22 percent increase over their initial offer, which many analysts see as making the buyout viable. PeopleSoft management is pissed because this screws the deal with JD Edwards and potentially introduces a sense of instability in their business.
The latest news is that Oracle is also suing PeopleSoft for not giving the first bid its due and to prevent them from creating situations that could potentially harm Oracle is the buyout succeeds. Apparently, PeopleSoft has begun devising a rebate plan to return either a portion of or double the money spent on the product (depending on which source you cite) to their customers if Oracle succeeds in the buyout, which Oracle would then be contractually obligated to oblige. Considering that Oracle has said that they plan on gutting the hell out of PeopleSoft and eventually phasing the PeopleSoft product out, this would appear lucrative to PeopleSoft’s customers. The customers, of course, are the whole reason Oracle is even bothering. The assumption is that, if Oracle does make PeopleSoft its own, they will migrate customers using PeopleSoft products over to Oracle, probably at a slightly reduced price.
For my own personal reasons, I’d like to see Oracle trounce PeopleSoft into the ground. This is probably due more to the fact that I’m in the midst of using it and find it to be, from a development standpoint, the single worst experience of my professional career. Of course, then I’d be stuck with Oracle, which doesn’t seem too bad a proposition (finally, my skills would be useful again!) but may be a cure worse than the disease. Still, watching it play out is an awful lot of fun. Toss in Joan Collins and you’ve got yourself a hit show!
