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PeopleSoft, Inc. ( NASDAQ: [http://quotes.nasdaq.com/asp/SummaryQuote.asp?symbol= }&selected= } }]) is a software company that provides enterprise resource planning, Human Resource Management Systems and customer relationship management software solutions to large corporations. The company was founded in 1987 by Dave Duffield and Ken Morris. Its roots lie from the idea Duffield had about a " Client-Server" (then a new concept) version of Integral's popular mainframe HRMS package. Once Integral declined development and released Duffield to pursue this endeavor on his own, PeopleSoft was born.The software is modularized into specific components, such as payroll, human resources, inventory, various accounting packages, student enrollment, etc. It is well known for its ability to be easily "customized," or tailor-made, to fit the specific business needs of each client, while still being generic enough to meet corporate and governmental tracking requirements. Its detractors decry the frequent bugs found in the system, which require patches and fixes. PeopleSoft - like most large software companies - has spawned an industry-within-an-industry of PeopleSoft consulting, the implementation and maintenance of the product.
In 2003, PeopleSoft performed a friendly mergerThis page deals with the combination of two companies into one. For information about other uses of the word "merge", see merge. In business or economics a merger is a combination of two companies into one larger company. Such actions are commonly volunta with smaller rival J.D. EdwardsEdwards is a software company founded in March 1977 in Denver, Colorado by Jack Thompson, Dan Gregory and Ed McVaney. It made its name building accounting software for IBM minicomputers beginning with the System/34 and /36 and focusing from the mid 1980s software. The rival with a similar product line provided strange synergiesSynergy or synergism, most often refers to the phenomenon of two or more discrete influences or agents acting in common to create an effect which is greater than the sum of the effects each is able to create independently. Synergy has origins as a theolog for the newly-combined company. J.D. Edwards products catered to small to mid-sized companies running a variety of hardware platformsIn computing, a platform describes some sort of framework, either in hardware or software, which allows software to run. Typical platforms include a computer's architecture, operating system, or programming languages and their runtime libraries. Hardware,, including IBMThis article is about the International Business Machines Corporation; see IBM (disambiguation) for other uses of this abbreviation. International Business Machines Corporation IBM or colloquially, Big Blue (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since AS/400, HPThe Hewlett-Packard Company ( NYSE: HPQ , commonly known as HP is a very large, global company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. Its products are concentrated in the fields of computing, printing, and digital imaging. It also sells so, UNIX, and Windows, as well as various database systems, like Oracle, MS SQL, and IBM DB2. In addition, PeopleSoft was now committed to supporting an old-style "green screen" application -- the same application which drove Duffield to branch out and create PeopleSoft in the first place (if the J.D. Edwards customer is running them on an AS400 world software.)
The whole software suite of PeopleSoft is currently moving from the traditional client-server based design to web-centric design. The end result is that all of a company's business functions can be accessed and run on a web client. Security and system setup functions, though, still need to be performed on a fat client machine.
Beginning in 2003, PeopleSoft battled with Oracle over control of the PeopleSoft company. In June 2003, Oracle made a $7 billion bid ($19.50/share) to take over PeopleSoft, in what many describe as a hostile corporate takeover attempt. In February 2004, Oracle increased their bid to approximately $9.4 billion ($26/share), a 33 % increase; this offer was also rejected forthwith by PeopleSoft's board of directors. Later that month, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit to block Oracle, on the grounds that the acquisition attempt would break anti-trust laws; however, in September 2004, this suit was rejected by a U.S. Federal judge, who found that the Justice Department had not proven its anti-trust case. In October, the European Commission also cleared the way for Oracle's hostile takeover, in what many industry pundits believe was the last hurdle Oracle needed to overcome. Oracle has reduced the offer to $7.7 billion, or $21 per share, in May 2004. On November 1 2004, Oracle raised the bid again to $9.4 billion, or $24 per share, marking a 14% increase.
