The headlines from the last week shouting about the rivalry between Larry Ellison and Craig Conway overshadowed the real subtext to the struggle for PeopleSoft: the coming competition between Oracle and Microsoft for who's going to be No. 1 with enterprise customers.
This is a lot more than an offshoot of a personal rivalry between two companies--and their strong-willed founders--who aren't very fond of each other. Structural changes in the software industry are forcing both Oracle and Microsoft to step outside their comfort zones and vie for new customers. And with some $30 billion in Internet applications business up for grabs, the stakes couldn't be higher.
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