PeopleSoft - Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation

Beginning in 2003, Oracle began to maneuver for control of the PeopleSoft company. In June 2003, Oracle made a $13 billion bid in a hostile corporate takeover attempt. In February 2004, Oracle decreased their bid to approximately $9.4 billion; this offer was also rejected by PeopleSoft's board of directors. Later that month, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit to block Oracle, on the grounds that the acquisition would break anti-trust laws. In September 2004, the suit was rejected by a U.S. Federal judge, who found that the Justice Department had not proven its anti-trust case. In October, the same decision was handed down by the European Commission. Though Oracle had reduced its offer to $7.7 billion in May, it again raised its bid in November to $9.4 billion, marking a 14% increase.

In December 2004, Oracle announced that it had signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire PeopleSoft for approximately $10.3 billion. A month after the acquisition of PeopleSoft, Oracle cut over half of PeopleSoft's workforce, laying off 6,000 of PeopleSoft's 11,000 employees.

Oracle moved to capitalize on the perceived strong brand loyalty within the JD Edwards user community by rebranding former JD Edwards products. Thus PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne became JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and PeopleSoft World became JD Edwards World. Oracle has announced that a new product, Fusion Applications, is to be released in the near future. Oracle says Fusion will take the best aspects of the PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Oracle Applications and merge them into a new product suite.

Oracle is committed to ongoing maintenance and enhancements to the PeopleSoft application suite with its Application Unlimited program, recently releasing PeopleTools 8.52.