What are your thoughts on the announcements from PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards and Oracle this
week?
I
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think we're seeing the software industry version of "let's be king of the mountain," similar to
the HP/Compaq merger which was supposed to help the combined company compete with IBM (on
breadth/services) and Dell (on scale/efficiency). Perhaps a better example was IBM's hostile
takeover of Lotus years ago, which helped IBM get into the apps market after struggling for
years.My quick reaction is that these moves mean PeopleSoft admits it can't really penetrate the mid-market, so buying a company who can is the next best thing. And Oracle's takeover bid means it has low confidence in succeeding in the apps business (similar to IBM), so buying a company that has "apps DNA" is the next best thing.
And perhaps they both realize that, aside from Siebel, the real competitor is SAP which is building real momentum in CRM and has a huge customer base already. A more interesting question is, what will Siebel do? The CRM software leader could end up the leader of an industry that just got bought by the ERP industry.
(Visit our news page for coverage of these acquisitions http://www.searchcrm.com/news)
This was first published in June 2003
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