Oracle Details PeopleSoft Merger Plans

By Aaron Dobbins, BetaNews

January 14, 2005, 10:08 PM

Oracle today further revealed its plans for both PeopleSoft and its employees as the two companies continue to integrate. Over the next ten days, Oracle plans to slash as many as 5,000 jobs in an effort to bring the combined workforce down to 50,000.

The cuts will come in both companies, and in a bid to satisfy current PeopleSoft customers, the plan includes keeping more than 90 percent of the existing PeopleSoft development and support staff.

The technical staff will remain onboard at least long enough to give customers release 8.9 of the PeopleSoft product, and a version 9.0 upgrade.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison commented that his company now "will have the resources to deliver on the development and support commitments we have made to PeopleSoft customers over the last 18 months."

Oracle will officially mark the beginning of the newly combined company next week on Tuesday, January 18 in a webcast detailing the new organization, software development plans, as well as marketing strategies.

After 18 months of increased offers and often bitter debate between the two parties, Oracle won the battle and officially completed the acquisition of PeopleSoft. To date, 97 percent of PeopleSoft shareholders have either traded or sold their stock.

Oracle had backed off its original statement early in the process that it planned to cut 6,000 jobs from PeopleSoft alone -- amounting to roughly half of the workforce -- though Oracle had not been specific until today as to what its intentions were.

The next generation of business applications to come from the combined company will be based on Java standards, and combine the best aspects from Oracle, PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards, which was acquired by PeopleSoft prior to Oracle's takeover.