PeopleSoft - "Applications Unlimited"
After the Big News “Applications Unlimited” – by Charles Phillip, I thought I would do some research on these promises. The almost obvious aspect of this announcement was the fear of Oracle in SAP stealing their customer base. PeopleSoft was not procured for its strength in applications; Oracle went in for the huge Customer base that the acquisition would give them – But this is of least importance, as most of know where all this was heading to - Monopoly. The deeper meaning in this announcement when understood will only shatter our hopes of where the IT industry is heading to.
The first PeopleSoft 9.0 product release that I found on Customer Connection was Enterprise Learning Management. Now, that PeopleSoft 9.0 was released for this product I wanted to know what the ELM Development team was up to; for my disappointment I heard that this development team was scrapped and moved to product fusion (This might not really be true, as this one came from a rather unreliable source – But cannot rule this out as impossible!). Nevertheless, let us take a closer look at what, if this were true, are Oracle’s intentions with “Applications Unlimited”. Oracle I guess is looking to convert most of the Development teams of PeopleSoft, Siebel, JDE and Oracle under one umbrella as per their previous plan of Fusion development. Then, what about “Apps Unlimited”, the support development teams will be responsible for developing future releases of PeopleSoft (post 9.0), Siebel and JDE. “Apps Unlimited” will only provide certain enhancements to Customers wanting to stick with PeopleSoft and if any real improvement which the Customer would require from the applications - He might have to move to Fusion. The support development teams might be discouraged from making major enhancements to future releases of existing Application products, while these will be part of Fusion –Customers who would like to make use of these benefits must move ahead to Fusion.
Oracle has pulled this one to perfection; it can now retain the Customers in existing applications and at the same time will be working hard on building and selling Fusion. The real story is what is demeaning; I am yet to see another business where a Company dictates terms to its Customers. Why should this happen in the IT industry? Probably the next decade will save Customers the trouble of depending too much on the product vendor. Probably, we will have a lot more competition in this sphere to pull the client out of the current situation. So much for all these probable statements!
Kindly be informed - these are my personal views and Oracle Corporation has no role to play with this post.
2 comments:
It might not be just to stop PS customers jumping to SAP. What if Oracle have realised the Fusion project is a bigger job than they thought and it's not going to come in on time ? (wouldn't be the first time). PS customers on "static" releases 8.8 and 8.9 might wait 3 or 4 years for Fusion but will they wait any longer? Promising enhancements to 9.0 and beyond may be a way of keeping customers happy until Fusion is "really" ready.
Graham,
Your observation about Oracle's realization of Fusion goal being a bigger job is perfect. But, the announcement made by Charles Phillip had this small note....."SAP are trying to steal ou r Customers by pointing the uncertainty of our product future and I would appreciate if they could do the same by pointing at our product incompetency,they will not be able to prove our product incompetency for our developers are working really hard."...souce cannot be mentioned.
But my real concern with this Apps Unlimited offer was that it really does not provide the Customer with what they need. Every Customer will require his investment to be safe, and these annoncements must not just be targeted at appeasing their realistic concerns.
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