June 7, 2003

So Oracle wants to buy PeopleSoft - I hope they do their homework

I saw in the news that Oracle wants to buy PeopleSoft.  I hope they do their homework, particularly about PeopleSoft's CEO, Craig Conway.

I encountered PeopleSoft's CEO when he was brought into a software/networking company in Santa Cruz, TGV, to take them public (and then later to sell the company to Cisco.)

I do hope the people at Oracle look at the "job" that Conway did on TGV and on my own company, Empirical Tools and Technologies that had TGV as a principal investor.  The California Department of Corporations has a rather complete record of how TGV, under the direction of Conway, destroyed a running corporation with award winning products.

I do hope the people at Oracle ask Cisco about Cisco's acquisition of TGV, an acquisition that has been frequently described as "failed", and ask why Cisco chose not to employ Conway after the acquisition.

As for myself, I was appalled when I heard that PeopleSoft's Board of Directors had engaged Conway as CEO.  One would have hoped that the Board of Directors of a corporation such as PeopleSoft would have done some background checks.  I immediately dumped PeopleSoft from my portfolio and have avoided them, and their products, ever since.

It would be justice indeed, if Larry Ellison, were to give PeopleSoft's CEO a taste of the kind of treatment that PeopleSoft's CEO has dished out to others over the years.

Posted by karl at June 7, 2003 4:38 PM