Oracle expansion under fire in court
Larry Ellison defends firm's 'shopping list'
Siebel Systems and BEA were on Oracle's shopping list before it launched its hostile $7.7bn bid for PeopleSoft, according to Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison.
A pre-videotaped deposition of Ellison was played in a San Francisco federal courtroom last week, as he testified in the appeal against the US Department of Justice's (DoJ's) decision to block Oracle's bid for PeopleSoft.
Ellison claimed Tom Siebel, Siebel's chief executive, came to his house and tried to sell him the CRM vendor. Siebel worked for Oracle before he set up the firm.
Ellison noted, however, that Siebel would be an attractive buy only if the PeopleSoft acquisition failed. He considered PeopleSoft a better fit for Oracle's needs.
The DoJ believes the acquisition would damage competition in the enterprise software market, because it would leave only Oracle and SAP as serious players and cause prices to rise.
In his deposition Ellison said he needed the PeopleSoft acquisition to get enough scale to compete with Microsoft and IBM.
He also admitted that JD Edwards had been considered as a target. PeopleSoft's acquisition of JD Edwards last June sparked Oracle's bid for PeopleSoft.
Philip Carnelley, software research director at analyst Ovum, said Oracle did not want to be left in a compromising position.
"It seems that Oracle is being squeezed in the middle, with IBM at the high end and Microsoft and open source at the lower end. Oracle believes the market is constricting, leaving a small number of large vendors, and it wants to be included.
"Whatever happens, Oracle will look to pad out its middleware offering to become an all-encompassing provider," he said.
The appeal continues.