Oracle takes Retek: integration begins

A brief but illuminating skirmish between Oracle and SAP saw the former fight off the latter for retail ERP software developer Retek – but only after Oracle upped the ante to $11.25m valuing Retek at $670m. Early last month, SAP seemed to be acquiring Retek in a done deal for $515m, but then Oracle upped the bid to $547. That led to a series of bids and counter bids, resulting in Oracle quickly taking the prize. Pundits speculate that SAP’s interest may in he end have been more in raising the price than acquiring Retek, but either way, Oracle now has another business to weave into its culture. It’s small beer compared with the Oracle takeover of PeopleSoft at $10.3 bn, which resulted in Oracle’s Q3 net earnings, announced last month, falling back 15% due to restructuring and acquisition charges. More interesting, although inconclusive, were the figures for enterprise applications new license revenue: a fall of 14% in real terms, year on year, taking out PeopleSoft revenues in the quarter. Analyst Gartner notes that PeopleSoft may well have “drained its sales pipeline”. It rightly asks the question, is this the normal effect of a protracted acquisition, or are there more fundamental issues? Time will tell, but given Oracle’s undertakings around the various ERP suites and its convergence roadmap, plus PeopleSoft’s earlier offerings to manufacturing, particularly those around demand-driven manufacturing and the link with JCIT, the future ought to be bright – both for the company and for its users.