Oracle confident of a win

By Warwick Ashford, ITWeb London correspondent

Johannesburg, 24 Nov 2004

Oracle SA leaders say there is a lot of new interest in IT and they expect business to be good, irrespective of the outcome of the bid to acquire PeopleSoft.

This show of confidence comes less than a week after Oracle partner, New Dawn Technologies, won the bid to provide an enterprise resource planning solution for the State IT Agency.

Commenting on Oracle`s bid to acquire PeopleSoft, Kelvin Reynolds, Oracle SA MD, says he believes there may still be a few rounds to go and he would not be surprised if the matter remained unresolved until after the start of 2005.

"We believe Oracle is set to take a bigger slice of the application market with or without PeopleSoft," affirms Reynolds. "The business horizon is the best I have seen for three or four years."

Deon Els, Oracle SA channel director, agrees: "There is good business in the application space, whether or not the PeopleSoft acquisition happens."

This week, PeopleSoft again rejected Oracle`s offer to buy the group, even though Oracle has received more than 60% commitment from PeopleSoft shareholders for the proposed take-over.

PeopleSoft`s rejection of the offer is certain to prolong the battle, which has now been waged for 17 months.

Oracle is scheduled to go to court today to ask for the removal of a measure implemented by PeopleSoft to prevent a takeover, known as a "poison pill".

Analysts say if the court does not remove the poison pill, the next measure open to Oracle is to nominate candidates to the PeopleSoft board who are more amenable to a merger.