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/PeopleSoft would ditch J.D. Edwards">
After all, J.D. Edwards is a late and, in Oracles eyes, unwelcome addition to the PeopleSoft trophy. Such a move would obviously help to maintain the competitive marketplace. In addition, there are reasons why Oracle has no interest in supporting J.D. Edwards customers, some 60 percent of which run their applications on IBM databases. Oracles not interested in supporting a population of customers running on its competitors databases. Hence, spinning off J.D. Edwards to a company thats more IBM-centric would both satisfy the DoJs antitrust concerns and get a bunch of IBM loyalists off Oracles hands.
Dominy suggested imagining a company such as SSA as a potential acquirer. As an ERP software maker for manufacturing and the public sector, it has robust assets in the ERP landscape, from manufacturing to procurement. Its also obviously on a buying spree. In July it closed its acquisition of Baan, a division of Invensys. Before that, in 2002, it purchased the supply chain management, financial management and human resource management product lines of InterBiz, the e-business applications division of Computer Associates International Inc.
For its part, J.D. Edwards, when it was acquired by PeopleSoft, had some $700 million to $900 million in revenue. Take that amount of revenue and put it together with SSA/Baan, which has some 16,500 customers. That scenario alone creates a third power in the ERP space. Then theres Microsoft, already in the ring with its acquisitions of Great Plains Software and Navision.
With Microsoft gaining momentum, with SAP remaining the top gun in the marketplace, and with Oracle/PeopleSoft as a clear No. 2, the SSA/Baan/J.D. Edwards/InterBiz entity would be a $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion company and a clear player in a marketplace that wouldnt be overly consolidated.
Next page: The DoJs wrong about innovation.
With Microsoft gaining momentum, with SAP remaining the top gun in the marketplace, and with Oracle/PeopleSoft as a clear No. 2, the SSA/Baan/J.D. Edwards/InterBiz entity would be a $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion company and a clear player in a marketplace that wouldnt be overly consolidated.
