David,
I am sure you are right about PS acquiring other companies. PS has large cash reserves and they will most likely be on a buying spree. What is interesting, though is PS's strategy to incorporate their acquisitions. It is also interesting to contrast PS's strategy against that of SAP and Baan.
SAP builds
Baan buys and doesn't execute well on the integration
PS buys and integrates well.
SAP builds everything. They built their own retail solution, middleware, data warehousing tool, and now they are building their supply chain optimization tool, SCOPE. They usually cannot agree with partners on how to partner (for example I2). Also the integration with SAP is horribly complex due to the way they access their database. Building everything seems outmoded, the market wants best of breed.
Baan buys. They have bought CODA in financials and Meta4 in HR. However currently their is little to no integration with these products. While CODA is a strong company based in the UK, Meta4 is a crummy HR/Payroll product based in Spain that has not entered the US market yet. Meta4 will have no success their, competing in a mature market. If you look at Boeing, Baan's first major US customer, did Boeing decide to go with Baan for financials and HR? No, actually PS got the business. I think Baan is in for a big fall.
PS has great relations with their partners. If you look at Intrepid for example, Intrepid ported their solution to PeopleSoft's development environment before the acquisition was announced. Salerno's manufacturing quality app is already integrated with PeopleSofts environment, and Red Pepper, while not running on the PS development environment, has integration with the PS distribution products, making PS the only major ERP vendor with realtime enterprise planning (Oracle, Baan, SAP do not have a tool, SAP, though is building SCOPE).
Who are the acquisition targets of PS? Good question, Seibel is a likely target. But I am sure that PS has many in mind. I think by year end you will see a few acquisitions announced. And I am sure that PeopleSoft will be able to execute better than any other ERP vendor the integration of the acquisitions products with their own. |
