Oracle Boosts Bid For PeopleSoft By $1.2B, Sets New Deadline

Oracle last week said it would add $1.2 billion to its $6.3 billion bid to take over PeopleSoft.

Oracle upped the ante, in part, because PeopleSoft completed its acquisition of J.D. Edwards last month, after which PeopleSoft issued 53 million more shares of its stock.

The latest offer in Oracle's hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft is set to expire Aug. 15, yet Oracle has indicated that it might extend that deadline further.

Larry Ellison ups Oracle's takeover bid after PeopleSoft acquires J.D. Edwards.

A PeopleSoft spokesman declined to comment on Oracle's latest salvo.

One solution provider, who requested anonymity, said he expected that it would be at least six months before PeopleSoft indicates which of its products and J.D. Edwards' products would be discontinued. He also expressed concern that some prospective customers might delay their decisions. "The pipeline can't stand that kind of stress," he said.

Tony Mazzullo, president of the applications division at Manchester Technologies, a Hauppauge, N.Y.-based solution provider, said the nearly two-month-old Oracle vs. PeopleSoft spectacle also has ramifications for customers,let alone the issue of PeopleSoft integrating J.D. Edwards' technology with its own code.

"Quite honestly, my advice for anyone considering [investing in] PeopleSoft and Oracle [products] is to delay," Mazzullo said. "I can't see making a multimillion-dollar decision that is core to my business with that much uncertainty."

High-end ERP solutions from Oracle and PeopleSoft would be overkill anyway for many of Manchester's customers, Mazzullo added. "We tend to have a lot of small- and midsize business customers," he said.

Lower-priced products from companies such as Pilgrim Software and Glovia often meet manufacturing clients' ERP and business process management needs, Mazzullo said. "You don't need all of that complexity [of PeopleSoft or its rivals' offerings] for a midsize business," he said.

A new midmarket ERP entrant is NetLedger, which last week began shipping NetERP, a software package that includes inventory, procurement, business process automation and financial applications for midsize companies.

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