Justice Department pulls rug out from under itself

Talk about a strange turn of events. The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), is suing to block Oracle's hostile takeover of PeopleSoft, in part, on the basis that the market for high end financial systems for large commercial and governmental organizations is served by three main vendors: Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP.

So, when DoJ itself went shopping for high end financial systems, did it pick: a) Oracle, b) PeopleSoft, c) SAP, or d) none of the above?

The answer, of course, is (d).

That's right. The DoJ picked American Software's Momentum system, in a deal worth up to $24 million. According to Computerworld,

That price tag places the deal on the high end of the ERP spectrum -- precisely where the Justice Department has argued that customers' choices are limited. In its legal filings, the department refers to Oracle as "one of only three vendors of high-function enterprise software" and argues that other vendors can't match the product quality, scale and support levels available from the market's three leading ERP developers.

A DoJ spokesman was not available for comment.

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