PeopleSoft Jumps On WebSphere Bandwagon
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September 23, 2004 - PeopleSoft this week became the latest vendor converted by IBM&#39;s WebSphere gospel. The enterprise software giant announced from its Connect 2004 user conference that it has entered a
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Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) finally has won control of PeopleSoft (Nasdaq: PSFT) after an 18-month takeover battle, making the Redwood Shores, California-based company the world's second-largest vendor of business management applications software.
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PeopleSoft said it will work with IBM to optimize its apps for use with IBM's WebSphere middleware and development tools, and plans to begin selling WebSphere products directly through its own sales force.
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PeopleSoft Inc. shares surged 15 percent as investors interpreted the ouster of the company&#39;s chief executive as a sign the company might now be willing to accept Oracle Corp.
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Oracle is positioning itself to be a more powerful kingpin of content management systems, not just middleware.
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Users of technology from both companies today expressed concern about Oracle's $8.5 billion agreement to buy BEA Systems and to fold in the latter's middleware to the Oracle software stack.The BEA board of director's vote to approve the sale for $19.375 a share comes just three months after it spurned Oracle's $6.7 billion offer in October to buy the middleware vendor.Burc Oral, a senior architect at Cambridge, Mass.-based government contractor Cell Exchange, said that while the acquisition will give users the option of buying a database and application server from a single vendor, he also expects a period of "confusion" for BEA users because of technology overlap.Oral, who also heads up the New England BEA User Group, said that he expects that the deal will likely mean the end of some products -- "a little from Oracle and a lot from BEA."Oral said that Oracle would be well served to retain BEA's WebLogic product, which has a hearty following among users, who have been provided with good support from BEA over the years. "[BEA] had their [WebLogic] product out there many years before Oracle was out there," Oral said. "[It] is very easy to use and BEA has always been very friendly to the user community with downloads and documentation. Oracle doesn't have this wide acceptance from the user community in terms of applications. With BEA life is a lot easier."But, he noted that since Oracle made its first bid for BEA in October, the middleware firm has been less responsive than usual to the user group. In addition, Oral said that users from previous Oracle acquisitions including Siebel and Hyperion appear to be "getting better value" from a larger organization that they did before the acquisition.Jim Burgard, assistant vice chancellor of university computing and communication at the University of New Orleans, said that he doesn't expect the deal to significantly impact his organization, which uses WebLogic with Oracle's PeopleSoft applications. However, he added that he "does have some concerns about future licensing and maintenance costs now that all the components are owned by one vendor."Mike Gilpin, an analyst with Forrester Research, said that Burgard's fear is not unfounded, noting that there is a chance that support costs for users of BEA's WebLogic Server, AquaLogic Service Bus, AquaLogic BPM, WebLogic Event Server, and AquaLogic SOA Management products will grow after the deal closes later this year.Gilpin did note that Oracle has promised "lifetime support" for BEA products that overlap Oracle's offerings. That means that BEA users won't have to dump their BEA products but may over time pay more for support, he said. If they do move to Oracle's technology, they'll have to pay for migration, Gilpin added."Oracle has assured us that they will be very mindful of protecting the interests of existing BEA customers, just as they have been for customers of PeopleSoft and Siebel -- and I find their assurances credible," Gilpin said "It's not in Oracle's interest to aggravate these customers, In many cases they are already Oracle customers, anyway."Todd Langille, project manager of Administrative Computing for Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., said that he has concerns over whether Oracle has a "clear coherent strategy" for its growing software portfolio, which includes many similar products.For example, he noted that Oracle bought business intelligence software vendors Hyperion and Siebel despite have its own BI tool set, Discover. "I take a look at that mix of acquisitions, and I'm not really sure what their data warehouse strategy will be with all their business intelligence products in play," he remarked.Langille did note that because Dartmouth runs both Oracle Application Server and BEA's WebLogic software, it's not as important to him which product becomes the database vendor's primary middleware offering. "We see [the acquisition] as probably a knocking down of competition, but given that we use both products, we stand to benefit from whatever intellectual properly Oracle [gains]," he added.BEA should expedite Oracle's efforts to construct a standards-based middleware architecture, Langille said. However, he acknowledged that it will take some time before any wholesale replacement for Oracle Application Server arrives."I don't think products are identical, and for that reason, I don't think one will disappear quickly," he added.Patricia Dues, enterprise program manager for the city of Las Vegas, said she hopes Oracle can use BEA technology to improve its various offerings. For example, she said she hopes software acquired from BEA can augment the analytical capability of Oracle's Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition offering recently purchased by the city."We realize what Oracle has done with other acquisitions in taking the best of both worlds. There's always room for improvement, and this sparks our interest with the acquisition of BEA," said Dues.Dues downplayed any concerns that Oracle's ongoing attrition of its software competitors - both large and small - may divert the company's focus away from existing customers or product roadmaps. "I don't see this as what Larry [Ellison] wants. I think there's a strategy behind it all. I can't say that I feel like [Oracle] is going to desert us, they have too many products to manage," she said.
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âSee you next year in Las Vegas ,â proclaimed a marquee at the PeopleSoft user conference in San Francisco in late September. It was one of many not-so-subtle attempts by the company to reassure its customers
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PeopleSoft (Nasdaq: PSFT) said on Monday that quarterly revenues would beat Wall Street's expectations, due to an increase in the number of customers making large orders for its enterprise-application software.
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Oracle&#39;s agreement to buy PeopleSoft for $26.50 per share, or approximately $10.3 billion, means a new era for users of PeopleSoft&#39;s enterprise applications.
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PeopleSoft Inc. is trying to create a party-like atmosphere at its annual customer conference, but this week's gathering may feel more like a wake with rival Oracle Corp.'s &#36;7.7 billion takeover bid looming larger than ever.
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Blog: MySQL is relentlessly pushing its way toward an IPO, as BusinessWeek reports, which makes the entire open source ecosystem that much more valuable.
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Server and software company prepares new foray into market for dot-com infrastructure.
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The company is growing at hyperspeed because of the surge of multimedia on the Web.
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Mobile software provider PalmSource is leaping into a market with a potentially huge upside with the acquisition of China MobileSoft (CMS), and at the same time is giving a big boost to the open source developer commmunity.
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As the threat of a hostile takeover by Oracle rumbles on, PeopleSoft has announced a $1bn partnership with IBM. Speaking at PeopleSoft&#39;s user conference in San Francisco yesterday, the company&#39;s chief executive
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Big Blue --a white knight? It&#39;s easy to see how industry watchers got carried away with speculation that IBM (IBM ) might be riding to rescue of beleaguered PeopleSoft (PSFT ). On Sept.
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The vendor brings its E-Business Suite to North America to go against Microsoft&#39;s ERP software. By Laurie Sullivan. With the first phase of the high-profile PeopleSoft Inc.