Does Microsoft compete with Oracle or PeopleSoft?
While Microsoft competes fiercely with Oracle in the database-software market, it’s not much of a player in high-end business applications. Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP are the Big Three in selling software to run corporate finance and human-resource departments at large corporations. Microsoft has spent $2.5 billion, acquiring Great Plains Software in 2001 and Navision in 2002, companies that sell business applications. But Microsoft’s customers are small to midsize concerns, not the domain of the Big Three. So then why has Microsoft become so central to the case? As with anything in the software industry, it’s the 800-pound gorilla everyone worries about. The Redmond giant has publicly said it intends to focus on small and midsize customers, leaving the large corporate business to others. Those public pronouncements serve Justice’s case well. Since the courts generally prefer that customers have three choices, if Oracle is allowed to buy PeopleSoft, one of those choices would go away.
