Rival Seeks Oracle, PeopleSoft Customers
from the capitalizing-on-turmoil dept
Someone told me that on Friday, after the surprise news of Oracle’s bid for PeopleSoft came out, Tom Siebel sent an email around to Siebel employees with the subject “Good news!”, and proceeded to explain why such a distracting event would allow Siebel to win some more deals. He wasn’t the only one to think so, apparently. SAP immediately cranked up their sales efforts and is actively trying to steal away customers from both Oracle and PeopleSoft, citing the ongoing merger battle turmoil as a reason to jump ship now. There are plenty of examples of merger battles causing companies to take their eye off the ball, so it wouldn’t be surprising if a prolonged fight helped competitors. SAP claims that plenty of people are proactively calling them, and they’re planning to offer some sort of “switch” incentive to make it even easier for customers to leave the whole Oracle/PeopleSoft mess behind.
