ERP chief slams takeover merry-go-round
ERP chief slams takeover merry-go-round
The president and CEO of ERP vendor AXSone says the current power struggle invloving major ERP companies Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards is causing untold damage to the sector.
John Rade told IDM that the takeover battle - which began with PeopleSoft's bid for JD Edwards and escalated when Oracle made a bid for PeopleSoft days later – is shaming the industry by showing little or no regard for the customer.
"In one sense, (our company is) a beneficiary of all this turmoil, but in another sense, as a senior executive of a major player in the enterprise software space, I am absolutely dismayed, disillusioned, and to a certain extent, outraged at the behaviour of Oracle and PeopleSoft. I have to ask who is representing the interests of the clients who have bought (PeopleSoft and JD Edwards) software in good faith only to have the rug pulled out from under them.
"If this was a consumer product rather than an enterprise product, we'd have every consumer activist in the world saying "What are these companies doing?" People invested in them thinking they were going to get up to 15 years use out of the product, and this is being threatened for no good reason other than financial re-engineering."
Rade, who was in Australia on business, following the recent success enjoyed by the company in winning the contract to supply Ballarat City Council with AXSone Financials system after the Authority baulked at the price it was quoted to upgrade its Oracle Financials system, says that each of the vendors involved in the three-way tussle had lost all sense of duty to their customers.
"There are good reasons why companies merge, and hopefully the good reasons involve something good happening to their customers, but I don't see anything good here.
"What I see is JD Edwards struggling to make a profit and generate revenue, looking for a safe haven and sacrificing its customers in the process. I see PeopleSoft, with its revenues down and declining, looking desperately for a way to pad out its top line, whilst Oracle, whose product line is in trouble, trying to take over a company in a hostile manner, and hostile takeovers don't work in the software industry."
Though vendors such as AXSone who are not embroiled in the saga may benefit in the short term from the confusion surrounding the trio, Rade says this does not make up for the damage caused in terms of public perception of the industry.
"We have spent years trying to gain legitimacy and be trusted as a company you can have a long term relationship with, as this software is not cheap. You don't decide to put in on Monday and take it out on Friday if it doesn't work like some $99 piece of software you find at the mall. We are talking mission critical systems of large enterprises, and I think somewhere along the line here the interests of the customers have to be represented."
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