The Week in Review: July 18, 2003

In the News...

PeopleSoft has completed its acquisition of J.D. Edwards. The company announced it has purchased approximately 110 million shares, or 88 percent of the outstanding shares of J.D. Edwards. "The powerful combination of PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards creates the second largest enterprise applications software company in the world," Craig Conway, PeopleSoft president and CEO, said in a statement. "The combination expands not only our customer base, product offerings, and markets, but also our talent. Our two companies share a high-performance, customer-focused culture and we look forward to welcoming our colleagues at J.D. Edwards to the PeopleSoft team."

Green Beacon Solutions, a CRM systems integration and consulting firm, announced that it has entered into a marketing partnership with Narragansett Technologies to offer the company's SpinnakerPro product alongside Green Beacon's wide range of CRM offerings. SpinnakerPro is a product aimed at measuring the return on investment of email marketing campaigns.

Earnings round up...

SAP AG reported a slip in sales for the quarter ended June 30. Total revenues for the quarter were down 8 percent to euro 1.6 billion ($1.8 billion), while earnings were euro 219 million ($245 million), compared to a net loss in the previous second quarter of euro 232 million ($260 million). Software revenue was down 13 percent, while services revenue also dropped 16 percent. Patrick Walravens, managing director and senior research analyst covering application software at JMP Securities, says that SAP's leadership is still solid. "SAP is the world's largest application software provider and is poised to benefit from industry consolidation over the next twelve to eighteen months," he says. "The company announced solid earnings in a difficult environment."

PeopleSoft also reported earnings for the second quarter ended June 30. Total revenue was $497 million, up 3 percent over the previous second quarter. Income was up slightly, totaling $36.5 million, compared to $36 million the previous quarter.

SupportSoft says revenues for the second quarter ended June 30 were $12.6 million, a 33 percent increase from $9.5 million for the same period last year. Net income was $2 million, compared with a net loss of $1.8 million in the previous quarter.

Made2Manage Systems says that for the second quarter ended June 30, total revenues were $7.9 million compared to $8.5 million in 2002's second quarter. Net income was $342,000, nearly tripling income of $135,000 in the previous second quarter.

Executive changes...

In addition to its earnings and acquisition announcements, PeopleSoft said today that Michael Maples, a member of J.D. Edwards' board of directors, was elected to the board of directors of PeopleSoft.

Salesforce.com has added Peter Gassner to the company's executive team as general manager and senior vice president for sforce, the salesforce.com client/service application development platform. Gassner was most recently vice president and general manager of PeopleTools for PeopleSoft.

Pragmatech Software, provider of sales effectiveness and proposal automation solutions, announced the appointment of David Fitzgerald as COO. Fitzgerald previously served as COO of Eyretel, senior vice president at Xchange, and was group vice president of sales for Vantive.

Former AMR Research executive John Bermudez has joined Demantra, a provider of consumer demand-driven enterprise solutions, as its new vice president of product marketing.