PeopleSoft Customers Want To Hear From Oracle

PeopleSoft Inc.'s largest customer group has invited the software company and rival Oracle Corp., which as made a hostile bid for PeopleSoft, to address the organization's conference next month.

Quest, the J.D. Edwards Users Group before the business software company was acquired last year by PeopleSoft, said Oracle President Charles Phillips has accepted the offer to appear at San Diego conference set for March 1. PeopleSoft has not yet responded, the group said.

Quest has 15,000 members, most of whom are uses of the PeopleSoft World and EnterpriseOne applications that were formerly owned by J.D. Edwards.

Quest has been inundated with customer concerns about Oracle's bid for PeopleSoft and the impact a merger would have on customers of the Pleasanton, Calif.-based, company.

"As a user group, our number one priority is that customers have their concerns addressed. That is the reason we have provided a forum for both PeopleSoft and Oracle to deliver information on their plans for World and EnterpriseOne users," Quest President Barb Schmit said in a statement. "We are not taking a stand to support the acquisition, but instead wish to get factual information about what it might mean to those of us who only last year experienced the uncertainty of moving from being J.D. Edwards customers to becoming PeopleSoft customers."

Oracle recently upped its bid for PeopleSoft to $26 a share. Larry Ellison, chief executive the Redwood City, Calif.-based software maker, said he was determined to pursue PeopleSoft, despite a decision by staffers in the U.S. Justice Department's Antitrust Division to recommend against the proposed acquisition.