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Hard on the heels of the announcement by the current market leader in the world of business software, the German giant SAP, that it will be buying TomorrowNow Inc., a supplier of software maintenance and support services for PeopleSoft apps - Oracle-PeopleSoft's CEO Larry Ellison has been speaking to the CNBC TV channel about how he is "sorry" about the 5,000 layoffs, or 9% of his combined new workforce, that his hostile acquisition has triggered.

"We never like to be in the position where we have more employees than jobs," Ellison said, "but that's just one of the things that happen when you glue two big companies together."

Prior to the announcement of the financial details of the takeover - an announcement which is due to take place next week, on January 26 - Ellison's Oracle-PeopleSoft has been making it clear that it is going to become a major thorn in the side for SAP.

Ellison has already announced that the new merged company will support PeopleSoft product lines until 2013 and will go ahead with releasing PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0. He is expecting the newly merged company to retain PeopleSoft customers at the same 95% rate it currently retains its own users.

Confirming that Oracle won't buy another company until it has successfully integrated PeopleSoft, Ellison has conceded that it will take 3-4 years to complete "Project Fusion" - to develop a product combining the software of both companies.

Any "Project Fusion" products would be written in Java and use standards-based rules to allow easy integration with other applications, and Ellison will personally babysit the endeavor: "My biggest focus is on Project Fusion," he said.

Oracle-PeopleSoft intends to take the game to SAP, which in turn recently rolled out database server software, NetWeaver, aimed to steal marketshare from Oracle. "We will win," he has (predictably) said.