At the San Francisco OracleWorld event on Tuesday, chief executive officer Larry Ellison said he was "optimistic" about the outcome, but it was left to his executive vice president, Chuck Phillips to answer media questions in special OracleWorld session held today.
Phillips fielded several questions about how PeopleSoft and Oracle customers were reacting to the protracted takeover bid.
"We have spoken to several PeopleSoft customers who have said in private that they want the deal to go ahead," Phillips said. These customers have decided not to go public with their views however because that act might not "be in their best interest" at the moment.
There was concern that, should the deal be successful, Oracle might require PeopleSoft customers to use Oracle's database products. "We would not force customers to run Oracle database after the acquisition -- we don't have that kind of market power," Phillips said. "[If we tried] it would probably just make them run to SAP anyway."
Some recent reports have shown that pressures from IBM and Microsoft are making life difficult for Oracle during these proceedings. What does Phillips think of Gartner numbers that show Oracle slipping in market share while Microsoft is growing? "We don't agree with Gartner numbers." Phillips then went on to characterise Gartner's method of gathering this kind of data as "imprecise".
Ellison pre-empted much of this in a San Francisco Chronicle interview released the day before the start of OracleWorld, in which he bristled at the suggestion the takeover attempt was "hostile".
"The use of the word 'hostile' I find utterly fascinating because the question is: hostile to whom?" Ellison said.
"If you're renting a house in Pacific Heights, and I go to the owner and offer him $10 million for an $8 million house, that offer is not hostile. As a renter, I may feel that's not a welcome offer, but all we're doing is giving the owner a choice. So we want to go directly to the shareholders."
"[PeopleSoft CEO Craig] Conway said he wouldn't sell at any price, which is fascinating, by the way. It's not his choice to not sell at any price. It's the choice of the owners."
U.S. government regulators are currently reviewing Oracle's bid and are expected to give their decision on the issue sometime in October or November.
