By Abby Dinham, 19 March 2004 09:45
NEWS Australia's competition watchdog said today it is "concerned" Oracle's proposed hostile acquisition of PeopleSoft will lead to a "substantial lessening" of competition in the market in breach of that country's Trade Practices Act.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's airing of its concerns in a statement on its website follow the recent decision of the US Department of Justice to oppose Oracle's bid.
Oracle has indicated that it intends to appeal the Department's ruling.
ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel said if the acquisition goes through, it will have "wide ranging international consequences".
"The ACCC has contacted many Australian organisations, both public and private, which use enterprise application software. A significant number of these organisations have stated that the proposed acquisition will restrict their choices significantly and lower the level of competition, especially in relation to complex financial management software and human resource management software," said Samuel.
The ACCC says there are "significant" barriers for other software providers to compete with Oracle and PeopleSoft, as Samuel states "the software requirements of some organisations are very complex and it is not possible for the smaller software companies to meet these needs".
The US courts are scheduled to resume the case this Friday.
Abby Dinham writes for ZDNet Australia.
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1. anonymous
Actually, if your requirements are so complex as to really require one of the major players, you probably will get a cheaper and better system by bespoke development. $100 million dollars buys you an absolutely amazing system completely tailored to yourself,exercising some serious competitive advantage, implemented, running live AND you will own the source code AND you with have $90 to $95 million change. THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES! But, it will be perceived as a brave decision as no-one really wants to admit to the numbers of large ERP implementations that have failed to deliver a reasonable ROI payback within years.