Keeping pace with information technology.

• Author: Miranda, Rowan
• Position: From the editors

For the past several years, Government Finance Review has sought to dedicate at least one issue each year to the diffusion of advanced information technologies in state, provincial, and local governments. While we were planning this issue, considerable turmoil hit the technology marketplace. It is now within the realm of possibility that three of the four major enterprise resource planning software vendors may consolidate.

The announcement of PeopleSoft's intention to purchase J.D. Edwards was quickly followed by Oracle's offer to purchase PeopleSoft. At least one state government stated its intentions to go to court, since it was in the middle of a PeopleSoft implementation. It also went out and recruited a number of other state governments to develop a "working group" to examine the impact of industry consolidation on the public sector.

No matter what happens on the J.D. Edwards-PeopleSoft-Oracle acquisition issue, it is likely that considerable change is coming down the pipeline in the enterprise applications industry. The lead article of this issue, "Poison Pills and White Knights," examines the context of industry consolidation and presents changes that the ERP industry can institute to be more responsive to its...