Friday, July 18, 2003

It's official: PeopleSoft acquires J.D. Edwards

The combined firm will have annual sales of $2.8 billion, 13,000 employees and 11,000 customers in 150 countries, making it number two in the enterprise applications marketplace, behind SAP and ahead of Oracle's application business. The combination makes Oracle's bid for PeopleSoft now more expensive, and I still predict that it is not going to happen. The Associated Press today has details on PeopleSoft/JDE deal.

More interesting, however, is an interview on CNET with Ray Lane, former president of Oracle and currently a partner with venture firm Kleiner Perkins. Lane comments on structural changes in the software industry, the prospects for Oracle in acquiring PeopleSoft, and trends that will drive growth in IT in the coming years. Lane says, "A lot could be done above the ERP layer to build composite applications better and offer better user access. A lot of what I'll be doing is around finding a better process for integrating data and more intelligence. I've got a lot of data, but no freaking idea what it's doing."

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