Conway to Ellison: It's over
Published: 28 Aug 2003 15:50 BST
You say you're not spending time on it. But we reported this week that PeopleSoft recently resumed its money-back guarantee program to keep sales up with the Oracle threat still there. Is that campaign working?
By and large, the Oracle campaign has caused enormous customer support for PeopleSoft. The unanticipated consequence of Oracle was a very emotional, supportive reaction of customers. The customer assurance program, we continue to extend -- just to provide incentives to customers not to delay their transactions. Frankly, it's gone from a defensive tactic to one that's become an accelerant for our business.
If customers are loving the deal and things are working out great, what's your motivation for pursuing litigation against Oracle?
Well, when somebody tries to rob your bank -- even if they don't succeed -- I still think you press charges. We believe -- and I think the evidence coming out now is clearly showing -- that the attempt to acquire PeopleSoft was using the capital markets to harm PeopleSoft, not necessarily as a legitimate attempt to own PeopleSoft... and so there's still harm and there is still a predatory act committed. I think that act did not have the desired outcome, but it was still nonetheless predatory and we did lose some business along the way.
So far what's been the response from customers?
Unbelievably good response. A neutral response would have been a win from my point of view to something this big... customers are not sitting back and saying, "I'll see how this works out." They're assuming it's going to work out great because of the respective product strengths and common partnerships and all that stuff.
How are you going to pull off the merger in a way that keeps customers and investors confident in the company?
We're going to have a two-hour analyst meeting where we are going to be very specific and in full disclosure on financial synergies, revenue increases -- we'll do guidance from a revenue and earnings basis for Q4... the investment analysts that are looking for the benefit that comes from a combination of the two companies will have it; the industry analysts that are looking for the product road map will have the product road map in detail; the people looking for the distribution model and how PeopleSoft will go to market will have that very specifically. And at the end of two hours they will walk out of that room and say, "man, these guys have got a great plan. When did they have the time to do it?" Or else they'll say, "it seems pretty muddled; it seems pretty convoluted still and we're worried."
When you get right down to it, the question is who should be in charge of the No. 2 business applications company in the world behind SAP? Craig Conway or Larry Ellison? Why should Craig Conway be the man and not Larry Ellison?
I think there's a tendency to personalise this Oracle-PeopleSoft thing way too much. I left Oracle in 1992. That was 11 years ago. I have spent no time commenting, coveting and envying Larry Ellison... There's nothing personal between me and Larry Ellison. I think if you ask a customer which person are you investing in, they'd say, "neither of them." They'd say, "we make our decisions based upon architecture, based on features, functionality, company viability, customer support reputation" -- and I think when you look at all those things PeopleSoft is clearly better than Oracle.
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