Oracle recently announced that it has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire PeopleSoft for approximately US$10.3 (13.5) billion. Approved by the boards of directors of both companies, the agreement is expected to be finalised by early January 2005
Oracle recently announced that it has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire PeopleSoft for approximately US$10.3 (13.5) billion. Approved by the boards of directors of both companies, the agreement is expected to be finalised by early January 2005. “This merger works because we will have more customers, which increases our ability to invest more in applications development and support,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “We intend to enhance PeopleSoft 8 and develop a PeopleSoft 9 and enhance a JD Edwards 5 and develop a JD Edwards 6.” He also said Oracle would extend and improve support for existing JD Edwards and PeopleSoft customers worldwide.
Concerns over IT worker shortage
More than 40 per cent of HR, marketing and IT business decision-makers believe that a shortage of IT workers may once again become a problem for industry, according to a survey by marketing technology firm HotHouse. A survey of more than 2,000 businesses revealed that major shortages are predicted to occur in various job disciplines, with 58 per cent believing that business analysts top the list of at risk positions. Other professionals who will be in short supply include ASP.NET (33 per cent), JAVA/J2EE (25 per cent), PHP (25 per cent) programmers plus CSS, XHTML (25 per cent) web developers and ERP/CRM (25 per cent) implementation specialists, according to HotHouse.
Impart partners with HarvestRoad
Learning solutions integration firm Impart has announced an alliance with software development company HarvestRoad to create Queensland’s first eLearning Technical Centre of Excellence. The Technical Centre of Excellence will be based in Brisbane, and the need for products that allow sharing and re-use of content across multiple, often widely dispersed environments whilst maintaining a single version was increasing, according to Impart. HarvestRoad’s Federated Digital Repository System is designed to store and manage learning objects and their metadata, assemble them into standards-compliant packages and deliver that content to learning and course management systems.
SAP boosts client numbers in Asia-Pacific CRM market
Recent research from Gartner recently found that mySAP Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM) has become the leading CRM solution for Asia Pacific businesses. SAP has won more than 20 CRM clients over the last nine months. Gartner stated that SAP achieved the highest growth rate out of the top 10 vendors for new licence revenue in the CRM software space in Asia-Pacific, with 58 per cent year-on-year growth from 2002 to 2003. This increased their market share to 12.5 per cent for 2003. New SAP CRM clients include Bank Islam (Malaysia), SKC, Speedmate (Korea), Videocon and Mindtree (India), along with Komatsu (Australia), SKC Co. Ltd (Korea), CISCO Singapore and Fujitec South Asia (Singapore).
