PeopleSoft-JD Edwards deal - the shape of things to come

It felt so 1998. Excuse us for pointing it out but it isn't often these days that we get a billion dollar plus, out-of-the-blue acquisition of a software company.

So the announcement that PeopleSoft is to buy JD Edwards for about $1.7bn raised an eyebrow or two. And not just for its early Monday morning (for the US) timing.

Perhaps the industry won't be as jolted as when HP and Compaq quietly courted each other (almost two years ago now - see, time can fly in a downturn) but it is big news in the enterprise software space.

But here we won't talk about the relative merits of this big applications vendor marriage, the roots in HR and manufacturing and so on. We may be surprised to hear about the deal but we can say with some certainty: Expect more of it.

The big software companies - a select band that includes CA, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and arguably BEA or even Sun - will continue to look for smaller fish before a rising tide of recovery starts pricing them uncomfortably high again.

Some even suggest a hardcore of hardware vendors are on the verge of doing the same thing, with Dell, HP and IBM all firm favourites to get involved should acquisition become a watch word - lest we forget the latter has long been linked with Sun, of course.

But let's stick to software. With two major camps emerging (in the .Net and J2EE Java corners respectively) and certain markets already fairly sewn up several big boys, it is likely those same players are likely to want to cherry pick the best minnows.

A deal between PeopleSoft and JD Edwards is closer to a marriage of equals than the above scenario but execs in the same mould as Craig Conway and his team at PeopleSoft across the industry will be wanting to make sure they are never seen as one of those easy-kill minnows.