PeopleSoft Extends Industry Leadership
PeopleSoft Extends Industry Leadership
in Delivering
Total Ownership Experience
New Technology to Accelerate Upgrades, Ease Business Process Integration
Today at its Connect 2004 user conference, PeopleSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: PSFT) announced significant new technologies, extending the company’s leadership in delivering the leading total ownership experience for enterprise applications. One of the new technologies introduced, PeopleSoft® Accelerated Upgrade, will dramatically change the way customers upgrade their enterprise applications.
The solution will reduce upgrade time by 25 to 40 percent and decrease downtime to migrate to new releases by 66 percent. A second technology introduced today is PeopleSoft Interactive Services Repository, a comprehensive directory of business process integration points that will further reduce the challenges associated with application integration in a heterogeneous software environment. PeopleSoft’s Total Ownership Experience initiative, launched in May 2003, transforms the way customers implement, use, and maintain software, significantly driving down the time and costs associated with owning enterprise applications.
“IT organisations are under intense pressure to meet increasing user expectations with ever-decreasing resources,” said Ram Gupta, executive vice president, PeopleSoft Products and Technology. “The new products announced today will completely revolutionise the upgrade process for customers and reduce software integration complexity, driving down the cost and time to implement enterprise software. These new technologies widen our lead in providing the best Total Ownership Experience in the industry.”
Accelerated Upgrade to Reduce Upgrade Time by 25 to 40 Percent
PeopleSoft Accelerated Upgrade will significantly
change the enterprise application upgrade process. Until
now, enterprise application upgrades required customers to
copy their old production system onto a backup server and
then migrate the new software release functionality. With
PeopleSoft’s new Accelerated Upgrade, customers will only
need to copy their application customisations and data to
the new release.
Four tools will automate the new upgrade process, including a new visual comparison tool to identify customisations, a customisation migration tool, a new data transformation and migration tool, and PeopleSoft’s Change Assistant update tool that automatically transfers maintenance updates to the new release. As a result, the time to upgrade to a new software release will be reduced by 25 to 40 percent. Additionally, downtime from taking systems offline to move to the new production environment will be reduced by 66 percent and will require less than a day. The new automated data transformation tool will enable customers to easily move to new operating systems and database platforms as part of the upgrade process, providing them greater flexibility to move between system environments.
“Historically, enterprise application upgrades have often cost 30 percent or more of the original implementation,” said Barry Wilderman, senior vice president, META Group, Inc. “By introducing specialised programs to manage the upgrade process, vendors like PeopleSoft are addressing the total cost of upgrades issue head on.”
Interactive Service Repository Eases Business Process Integration One of the top IT challenges today is maintaining and updating integration points to reflect business process requirements and changes. PeopleSoft’s new Interactive Service Repository hosts content for more than 1,500 application integration points for PeopleSoft and third-party partner applications. The new repository enables customers to view business process integration points across multiple applications. This eliminates the time and resources previously needed to translate and update individual application integration points to address changing business process requirements.
Building on a Strong Track Record PeopleSoft has shipped seven new product releases with significant Total Ownership Experience functionality since the initiative was launched in May 2003. These technologies have reduced implementation time by 20 percent, increased user productivity on key tasks by 30 percent, driven down steps to apply updates and maintenance by 80 percent, and reduced time to resolve support incidents by 44 percent. Crimson Consulting Group Study on the Application Ownership Experience In a separate news release today, Crimson Consulting Group, an independent consulting firm, announced the findings of a research study that demonstrate PeopleSoft’s continued leadership in offering a superior application ownership experience. PeopleSoft received higher marks than SAP and Oracle in the areas of implementation, usability, and maintenance. Crimson noted the following:
Implementation: PeopleSoft implementation features rated higher than Microsoft, SAP, and Siebel in enabling implementation teams to install, implement, and deploy enterprise applications on time and under budget. Usability: Across the features evaluated, PeopleSoft was ranked ahead of Oracle and SAP. Maintenance, Support, and Upgrades: PeopleSoft rated consistently high across the maintenance feature set primarily due to its ability to proactively and rapidly isolate and resolve application issues through embedded diagnostics scripts and thorough test scenarios.
Crimson Consulting’s research study can be found at www.crimson-consulting.com/ownershipexperiencestudy/index.html
PeopleSoft Interactive Service Repository will be available next quarter and PeopleSoft Accelerated Upgrade will be available in the first quarter of 2005. More information on how PeopleSoft technology enhancements have improved the Total Ownership Experience for customers is available at http://www.peoplesoft.com/goto/toefacts About PeopleSoft PeopleSoft (Nasdaq: PSFT) is the world’s second largest provider of enterprise application software with 12,400 customers in more than 25 industries and 150 countries. For more information, visit us at www.peoplesoft.com. ###
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements made in this press release that state the company’s or management’s intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions for the future are forward-looking statements.
Readers are cautioned that these statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results. Factors that may bear on the accuracy of these predictions include economic conditions in the U.S. and abroad, the ability to complete and deliver products and services within currently estimated time frames and budgets, market response to product announcements, and other risks referenced from time to time in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Please refer to the company’'s periodic reports to shareholders (Forms 10-K and 10-Q) for more information on the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ. PeopleSoft is a registered trademark of PeopleSoft, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright © 2004 PeopleSoft, Inc. All rights reserved.
ENDS