Ellison tells all about PeopleSoft saga

The following excerpts are from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's press conference on Monday announcing an agreement to acquire PeopleSoft.

Genesis of the deal
Both companies were ready to proceed with litigation in Delaware on Monday, and the trial teams were ready to complete the remainder of the trial. Over the weekend, however, Oracle was approached by a representative of PeopleSoft who indicated that the board was interested in resolving the matter and negotiating a deal. Oracle's acquisition committee and the board met several times over the course of the weekend to consider the matter and additional new information, and the parties were ultimately able to sign a deal late Sunday night.

Product plans
We intend to enhance PeopleSoft 8 and develop an all-new version of PeopleSoft 9. We intend to enhance JD Edwards 5 and develop an all-new version of the JD Edwards product line, JD Edwards 6. We also intend to design and merge the PeopleSoft/JD Edwards and Oracle application suite with the features necessary to enable easy migration from whatever product you are currently running.

Development tracks
We are going to keep the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards development teams separate from the Oracle development team for some time to come. They will be working on product enhancements to PeopleSoft 8 and JD Edwards 5, and they will be developing an all-new version of PeopleSoft 9, and an all-new version of JD Edwards 6.

Effect of merger on product release timetables
There should be no impact on schedules as to the availability of PeopleSoft 9 to PeopleSoft customers - or JD Edwards 6... Those products will come out, let's say, 18 months from now, approximately - you know, 12 to 24 months is a safer range.

On the competition with SAP
We have twice as many customers, so we have an installed base that's twice as large as we used to have. We are by far the largest applications supplier in North America.

Future acquisitions
I think we've been very, very clear: We are interested in other targets. However, we are not going to entertain any other large acquisitions until we've made it very clear to ourselves - and to the market, to our customers and to our shareholders - that we have made this merger work successfully.