vs By Derek Brown Adam Nasset Kelly Phelps Outline of Presentation Brief history of Oracle PeopleSoft and SAP What are ERP Systems and what role do the companies play in this field Why Oracle needed PeopleSoft Strategies used to acquire PeopleSoft and to appeal to PeopleSoft users Current state of the Oracle PeopleSoft acquisition Timeline of the PeopleSoft acquisition and other companies and technologies that Oracle has purchased or acquired Group Discussion Questions Who is Oracle Oracle founded in 1977 is one of the major companies developing database management systems tools for database development and enterprise resource planning software in the world The CEO for Oracle over the past several years has been Larry J Ellison Since this acquisition of PeopleSoft Oracle has made a lot of other attempts to build up their ERP and core technologies Who is PeopleSoft PeopleSoft Inc was a software company that provided enterprise resource planning human resource management and customer relationship management software solutions to large corporations worldwide PeopleSoft was founded in Pleasanton California in 1987 by Dave Duffield and Ken Morris PeopleSoft is easily customized to fit the specific business needs of each client while still remaining generic enough to meet corporate and governmental tracking requirements In 2003 PeopleSoft merged with smaller rival J D Edwards software Who is SAP SAP is the leading ERP software producer SAP s main product SAP R 3 More than 28 000 companies worldwide use their products What are Enterprise Resource Planning Systems Enterprise resource planning systems ERPs are management information systems that integrate and automate many of the business practices associated with the operations or production aspects of a company ERP software can aid in the control of many business activities like sales delivery billing production inventory management and human resources management ERPs are cross functional and enterprise wide To use ERP systems companies often seek the help of an ERP vendor or of thirdparty consulting companies Most ERP vendors allow changing their software to suit the business needs of their customer Advantages of ERP Systems The benefits from enterprise resource planning are claimed to include The ability for macro level decision making by having access to consolidated data information Transparency across entire organization Integration of all standard business processes human resources financials operation Lower inventory carrying costs ordering costs and production costs Lower accounting and record keeping costs Lower investment in equipment Lower investment in plant Increased process transparency for the customer Flexibility for greater product customization resulting in a better match to the exact needs of the customer Potential for increased sales volume increased sales revenue due to a higher effective price ie no discounts increased market share and increased profitability due to customer satisfaction improvements Potential for increased profitability or increased market share at a lower price due to cost and efficiency improvements Disadvantages of ERP Systems The disadvantages of the enterprise resource planning are claimed to be the systems can be very expensive to install and maintain ERPs are often seen as too rigid and difficult to adapt to the specific Workflow and Business process of some companies this is cited as one of the main causes of their failure some systems can be difficult to use the system is no better than the weakest link in the chain If the ERP system is integrated with a supply chain management system other potential problems include the system is vulnerable to a strike or labor problem at any one link in the chain there can be transportation inefficiencies if small lots of product are transported several times before reaching the consumer user once a system is established switching cost are very high for any one of the partners reduced flexibility and strategic control at the corporate level there is a resistance to sharing sensitive internal information information that may be essential to the process there are compatibility problems with the various legacy systems of all the partners Oracle s PeopleSoft s role in ERP Systems PeopleSoft was an ERP vendor and provided consulting for their products Oracle also provided some ERP uses for many companies and with the acquisition of PeopleSoft they greatly increased their influence in that market Oracle s database software is the backbone of many ERP systems PeopleSoft Products The whole software suite of PeopleSoft has changed from the clientserver based design to web centric design called PeopleSoft Internet Architecture PIA The architecture is built around PeopleSoft s own PeopleTools technology The benefit of creating their own development platform allowed PeopleSoft applications to run under many different operating systems and database platforms PeopleSoft s products are modularized into specific components What was CEO Larry J Ellison s thought process behind this conflict of interest Before this conflict between Oracle and PeopleSoft CEO Larry J Ellison envisioned Oracle to do for corporate software what Microsoft had done for PC software Ellison felt extremely threatened by Microsoft in the database field and wanted to expand into the growing ERP field PeopleSoft acquisition was an attempt to be able to compete with Germany s SAP PeopleSoft had just passed up Oracle as the second largest business software producer Easing PeopleSoft users fear of takeover PeopleSoft had roughly 11 000 customers in 150 countries which generated approximately 3 billion in revenue PeopleSoft customers very resistive to Oracle takeover early on PeopleSoft ran ads and had rallies against Oracle Oracle launched ad campaign and on Jan 18 th Project Fusion What is Project Fusion Oracle offered full support of PeopleSoft s three product lines through at least 2013 Oracle E Business suite PeopleSoft Enterprise and EnterpriseOne Offered full product support that included patches and fixes upgrading scripts tax and regulatory updates and tech support Oracle promised to maintain rival database technologies i e DB2 SQL Server What is Project Fusion 90 of PeopleSoft Tech staff to be retained 8 000 developers to support Project Fusion Project Fusion applications will be available sometime in 2007 Long term goal Construct a combined Super Suite of these products Other customer