Wednesday, February 18, 2004

The new customer-friendly Oracle

Maryfran Johnson, in a Computerworld editorial, points out that there will be delicious irony if the US Department of Justice blocks Oracle's takeover of PeopleSoft:
If you have a taste for irony, Ellison's predicament is a gourmet treat. After years of urging and supporting DOJ actions against Microsoft, he's likely to end up competitively hobbled by the same agency -- all while struggling to position his company for future battles with the convicted monopolist. If the PeopleSoft acquisition founders, Oracle's chances of taking on market leader SAP in the $20 billion enterprise application space will founder as well.
Johnson goes on to point out that the takeover battle between Oracle and PeopleSoft has made both vendors more eager to gain and win customer approval. She writes,
Oracle has suddenly seen the light about providing a more open application-integration strategy, with tools coming later this year to help IT managers tie eBusiness Suite 11i software into other systems. And at the Oracle AppsWorld Conference last month, Ellison was pitching the importance of software vendors providing customers with clear, predictable costs of ownership....Of course, it could be a coincidence that these user-friendly changes are popping up now. But I suspect not.
I analyzed Oracle's application integration strategy on Jan. 28 and Jan. 29.

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