I met a former employee of Peoplesoft yesterday who had an interesting story about Oracle.
Oracle has generously offered users of Peoplesoft 8 a free upgrade to version 9. But this generous offer seems to have strings attached. The upgrade was only free if you were prepared to make a hefty investment in Fusion middleware.
This may all seem a tad academic, especially if people actually want Fusion. But with the Department of Justice giving Oracle the green light to buy BEA, the situation may arise again, but with different products.
Now my contact also mentioned issues users had with reducing the number of Oracle database licences they bought. Apparently, while the licence fee would indeed be lower, Oracle ramped up maintenance, according to my contact, which meant users would not benefit financially at all from a reduction in the number of Oracle licences.
Myth? Maybe? But it's certainly worth looking into. I'm going to try and get to the bottom of this and will keep you posted.
