PeopleSoft

PeopleSoft
Founded	1987
Defunct	2005
Fate	merger
Successor	Oracle Corporation
Headquarters	Walnut Creek, California,; United States
Key people	David Duffield, Ken Morris

PeopleSoft, Inc. was a company that provided Human resource management systems (HRMS), customer relationship management, Manufacturing, Financials, Enterprise Performance Management, and Student Administration software solutions to large corporations, governments, and organizations.

History

Founded in 1987 by David Duffield and Ken Morris and originally headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, and eventually Pleasanton, California, PeopleSoft's roots began with an idea Duffield had about a "Client-Server" version of Integral Systems popular mainframe HRMS package. Once Integral declined development, Duffield was released to pursue this endeavor on his own, PeopleSoft was born. In 2003, when the company acquired J.D. Edwards, it decided to differentiate its former product line with those of Edwards by renaming both products. In January 2005, PeopleSoft was acquired in a hostile takeover by Oracle Corporation. This takeover was resisted, but Oracle overcame the legal challenge and PeopleSoft ceased to be an independent company. But, its products continue to be used.

Product design

The whole software suite of PeopleSoft moved from the traditional client-server based design to web-centric design, called PeopleSoft Internet Architecture (PIA) with their Version 8 release. The new format allowed all of a company's business functions to be accessed and run on a web client. A small number of security and system setup functions, though, still needed to be performed on a fat client machine. The inherent nature of Internet-based applications allowed for a straightforward transition from a client-server model ^{[citation needed]}. One important feature of PeopleSoft's PIA is that no code is required on the client - there is no need for additional downloads of plugins, or JVMs such as the Jinitiator required for Oracle Applications.

The architecture is built around PeopleSoft’s own PeopleTools technology. PeopleTools is a proprietary development platform (similar to a 4GL) created by PeopleSoft. This platform includes many different components a developer theoretically needs to create an application including a scripting language, design tools to define various types of metadata, standard security structure, and batch processing tools. The metadata describes data for user interfaces, tables, messages, security, navigation, portals, and so forth. The benefit of creating their own development platform allowed PeopleSoft applications to run on top of many different operating systems and database platforms, It is not tied to a single database platform (though with the Oracle takeover, it is possible this could change in the future). PeopleSoft implementations exist or have existed on Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Informix, Sybase, IBM DB2 (including its z/OS, Unix and OS/400 variants), Oracle Rdb and HP AllBase/SQL.

All of PeopleSoft’s modules (Human Resources, Supply Chain, Financials, CRM, etc.) are built with the PeopleTools technology. A benefit of the technology is that all the code which makes up a module can be customized to suit the owner’s business needs. An auxiliary product, PeopleCode, is an object-oriented proprietary language used to express business logic for PeopleSoft applications.

J.D. Edwards

In 2003, PeopleSoft performed a friendly merger with smaller rival J.D. Edwards software. The former rival's similar product line was differentiated by its target audience; mid-sized companies who could not afford the original PeopleSoft applications. J.D. Edwards product lines, formerly J.D. Edwards World on the AS/400 and OneWorld was and continues to be differentiated by its Configurable Network Architecture or CNC Architecture. This architecture is designed to shield applications from both the operating system of the database backend servers as long as some flavor of the SQL language is used. Thus, IBM's DB2/UDB, Microsoft's SQL 2000 and Oracle's databases are supported. J.D. Edwards also continued to support thousands of customers on AS/400s running its original J.D. Edwards World or WorldSoft" product.

Likewise servers can run on a host of operating systems including Linux, Windows and IBM's AS/400 operating system. In addition, PeopleSoft remains committed to supporting J.D. Edwards's original AS/400-based World software, also called WorldSoft, the old-style "green screen" application — the same application which drove Duffield to branch out and create PeopleSoft in the first place.

Oracle Corporation

Beginning in 2003, PeopleSoft battled with Oracle over control of the PeopleSoft company. In June 2003, Oracle made a $7 billion bid ($19.50/share) in a hostile corporate takeover attempt. In February 2004, Oracle increased their bid to approximately $9.4 billion ($26/share), a 33% increase; this offer was also rejected forthwith by PeopleSoft's board of directors. Later that month, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit to block Oracle, on the grounds that the acquisition would break anti-trust laws; however, in September 2004, the suit was rejected by a U.S. Federal judge, who found that the Justice Department had not proven its anti-trust case; in October, the same decision was handed down by the European Commission. Though Oracle had reduced its offer to $7.7 billion ($21/share) in May, it again raised its bid in November to $9.4 billion ($24/share), marking a 14% increase.

In December 2004, Oracle announced that it signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire PeopleSoft for approximately $10.3 billion ($26.50/share). In January 2005, Oracle made drastic cuts in the PeopleSoft ranks. These cuts affected approximately 9% of the 55,000 staff of the combined companies, but they have maintained at least 90% of PeopleSoft's product development and support staff.

After its acquisition of PeopleSoft, Oracle rebranded the original J.D. Edwards products to once again include the J.D. Edwards name in order to capitalize on the strong brand loyalty that was perceived to exist within the J.D. Edwards user community. Thus, PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne was rebranded JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and PeopleSoft World was rebranded JD Edwards World.

PeopleSoft has merged with Oracle and a new product Fusion is to be released by Oracle in the near future. Oracle says Fusion will take the best aspects of the PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Oracle Applications and merge them into a new product suite.

Oracle is, however, offering to maintain support for the existing Oracle and PeopleSoft product lines for customers who wish to continue with what they have. The line they are taking appears to be an attempt to prevent customer defections to rival ERP vendors by making it attractive to retain current applications or move to Fusion when appropriate.

PeopleSoft in use

PeopleSoft software has been successfully implemented by many of its customers. However there have been several instances of litigation. As with any ERP software, the implementation process (including analysis, planning and development), performance (load) testing and various other types of software testing is absolutely critical towards the success of the project.

Although Student Administration and Higher Education systems make up only a small proportion of the company's user base, they seem to have attracted a degree of adverse comment.

In 1997, Cleveland State University licensed PeopleSoft's software for tracking student records. They initially had an implementation partner, Kaludis Consulting Group Inc. After seven years of difficulties, CSU sued - initially naming Kaludis, but later (after Kaludis countersued) naming PeopleSoft as the main defendant and including Kaludis. The suit was for $510 million, claiming breach of contract, fraud, negligent misrepresentation and four other counts. The university claimed that software developed by PeopleSoft was missing specified features, and as a result caused disruption to their admissions process. PeopleSoft claimed that they had followed industry best practices. Court documents available online show the case was settled in 2005. The settlement agreement mentions a payment from Kaludis to CSU, as part of the settlement. There is no mention of any payment by PeopleSoft.

In December 1999, seven of the eight "Big Ten" Midwestern universities which licensed PeopleSoft's software wrote a joint, open letter to the PeopleSoft CEO complaining about quality and performance issues.

The California State University system adopted PeopleSoft in the early 2000s. The university spent $500 million on this system in a process so deficient that it resulted in an investigation and a rebuke by the state legislature. The Report of the California State Auditor criticised the University, amongst other things, for not having a business case for the implementation. When asked why it never conducted a formal return-on investment analysis on the CMS project, the university explained that the magnitude of potential savings estimated by its consultants, IBM and Pacific Partners Consulting Group (Pacific Partners), led them to believe that such a formal analysis was unnecessary.

Arizona State University, one of the largest universities in the western region, recently migrated to an Oracle database and PeopleSoft solution. The process to migrate is called OASIS at the university and has been widely successful[1].

PeopleSoft timeline

1987: PeopleSoft, Inc. founded by David Duffield and Ken Morris in Walnut Creek, CA, USA.
1988: PeopleSoft HRMS released.
1991: Begins opening international offices.
1994: Public distribution of Distribution and Financials modules.
1995: Launch of Student Administration System.
1996: Releases Manufacturing and PeopleSoft 6, their first ERP package.
1997: PeopleSoft 7 is released within upgraded ERP modules.
1998: PeopleSoft 7.5 is released with improved client/server technology. Acquired Intrepid Systems.
1999: Craig Conway named new CEO; release products to enable Internet transactions.
2000: Acquired Vantive Corporation.
2000: Deliver PeopleSoft 8 with an in-house application service provider.
2003: Acquired J.D. Edwards
2005: Acquired by Oracle Corporation.
2007: PeopleSoft HCM 9.0 is released.

External links