Oracle takes up the PeopleSoft challenge

Oracle executives are upbeat after meeting their major partners and clients this week to explain how the merger with PeopleSoft has been concluded down on the ground in the Middle East with minimal restructuring and no changes to product lines.

'Everybody was smiling,' says Vice President Husam Dajani. 'Some people were very worried that we were going to stop support for PeopleSoft products, and that is just not going to happen.

'Customers were delighted to hear that we will continue marketing all three product sets, including JD Edwards which was acquired by PeopleSoft two years ago, and that we will be supporting these products for at least 10 years at least. We are also committed to developing a combined product with seamless migration within three to five years.'

In the Middle East the Oracle takeover is only adding around 20 staff to a workforce of more than 400, and Mr. Dajani says Oracle is still recruiting so there is no question of redundancies.

But Oracle is gaining some substantial corporate clients as a result of the merger and will now be operating 1,000 sites for enterprise resource planning, of which around 20% are from the merger. These are locally won clients; Mr. Dajani says there is at least the same number again in globally won business software accounts.

'With the merger Oracle has the largest number of business software engineers under one roof, with over 8,000 specialist designers in-house. This gives us the strength to develop new products that can fit into new industries, and we are starting to combine systems for transactions and business intelligence which is the next step forward.'

Meanwhile, Oracle is very confident of maintaining strong regional growth, particularly in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt. And the speed in which the software house has executed the takeover - which was only concluded last month - must bode well for the future.

However, Mr. Dajani thinks that we have not seen the end of consolidation in the IT industry, although the Oracle takeover is the largest to date in the software sector, and could be the biggest for some time.