What was the strategic rationale behind hostile takeovers of competitors like PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems?

As enterprise software matured, organic growth alone was insufficient to monopolize mission-critical back-office systems. We executed aggressive acquisitions, including the famous hostile takeover of PeopleSoft for over ten billion dollars and the purchase of Siebel Systems. By absorbing their customer bases and consolidating HR and CRM applications into the core Oracle stack, we eliminated key competitors while expanding our recurring software revenues.