After seemingly mastering the human resource software market, PeopleSoft Inc has its eyes on the manufacturing software market, and yesterday announced the acquisition of Red Pepper Software Inc for about $225m in 2,975,000 newly-issued PeopleSoft shares. Three-year old Red Pepper’s revenues were around $10m at the last count and the company is yet to make a profit. The pair got together first in June last year, and early this year Pleasanton, California-based PeopleSoft announced enterprise resource planning software that incorporated red Pepper’s ResponseAgent technology, which is said to enable real-time planning and optimization of manufacturing operations. Red Pepper will remain as a separate business within the greater PeopleSoft, mainly because it has deals with the parent’s competitors SAP AG, Oracle Corp, as well as Baan Co NV. All 100 employees will be retained at the San Mateo, California headquarters, as well as the other offices around the US and in London. Red Pepper counts among it’s customers such names as Sun Microsystems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co, 3Com Inc and Coors Brewing. PeopleSoft enjoys a sizeable lead over the likes of Oracle, SAP, Dun & Bradstreet, Cyborg Systems Inc and IBM Corp’s CGI Informatique SA unit in the human resources market.
