The Four Hundred--PeopleSoft's iSeries Strategy Hinges on OneWorld Suite

At PeopleSoft's Connect 2003 conference last month, executives from PeopleSoft and the former J.D. Edwards presented a roadmap for the future of the united company's ERP software suites. As expected, the plan calls for maintaining separate code bases for the company's three respective software suites. In terms of its OS/400 strategy, practically all new development and cross-pollination with PeopleSoft's products will be delivered through the OneWorld code base, which WorldSoftware customers will be encouraged to upgrade to.

At Connect 2003, PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway and his top executives reiterated the company's view that the acquisition will directly benefit the users. Basically, the two companies have strengths in different industries and markets, and by combining the organizations, the resulting company is stronger and customers gain access to a broader range of software and services that they would otherwise lack. As we will see, the synergies of the two companies may benefit PeopleSoft Enterprise and EnterpriseOne users, but they won't necessarily have any effect on PeopleSoft World users, except that PeopleSoft is undeniably stronger now, as the second largest ERP vendor behind SAP, and is better able to fend off unsolicited bids from companies like Oracle that are just looking to pad their installed base.

Let's get the new names of the products out of the way before diving off the roadmap. PeopleSoft's integrated ERP suite, formerly called PeopleSoft 8, is now called PeopleSoft Enterprise. J.D. Edwards' JDE 5 (or OneWorld), which runs on Unix, Windows, and OS/400, is henceforth referred to as PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne. Finally, J.D. Edwards' WorldSoftware, which runs only on OS/400 and has by far the biggest installed base of the two J.D. Edwards products, is now PeopleSoft World. Two former J.D. Edwards executives, Dave Siebert and Les Wyatt, have been appointed as general managers of the PeopleSoft World and EnterpriseOne product lines respectively.

Siebert, Wyatt, and their boss, the executive vice president of products and technology, Ram Gupta, gave a glimpse at Connect 2003 of what PeopleSoft products are coming down the road. The company is executing an ambitious plan to cross-pollinate the PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards product lines, using a set of integration, portal, and warehouse products that Gupta called "complementary." The cross-pollination of technology will be delivered in two stages. The first stage involves writing integration code that allows certain modules of one ERP suite to work with the other. The second stage involves porting select modules outright so they run natively within the target environment.

At the show, PeopleSoft executives discussed two of the numerous cases of cross-pollination that will take place over the next 90 days. The first one involves making the sourcing and electronic procurement functionality in Supplier Relationship Management component of PeopleSoft Enterprise available in EnterpriseOne. The second area involves making the real estate and asset management functionality in the EnterpriseOne core ERP component available within PeopleSoft Enterprise.

Steve Maegdlin, vice president of product marketing for the EnterpriseOne product line, discussed several other cases of cross-pollination that are coming down the pike. Most involve making PeopleSoft Enterprise functionality available to EnterpriseOne users; PeopleSoft, at least at this point, doesn't seem too interested in J.D. Edwards technology beyond real estate and asset management. For example, the financial and analytic components of PeopleSoft Enterprise will be brought to EnterpriseOne, along with the planning, budgeting tools, and cash management tools. In the area of human resources (where PeopleSoft is a recognized leader), the electronic recruitment capabilities in the Human Capital Management component of PeopleSoft Enterprise will be brought over to EnterpriseOne, as will the call center functionality in its Customer Relationship Management product. PeopleSoft is committed to delivering these new capabilities to EnterpriseOne users, with the first new products becoming available before the end of the year.

As far as PeopleSoft World is concerned, the company is considering making some of the Customer Relationship Management and Supplier Relationship Management technology in PeopleSoft Enterprise available to PeopleSoft World, Maegdlin says. However, there's been no firm decision on whether to deliver these enhancements to PeopleSoft World customers--the only new capabilities that they would get out of the PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards merger. "Our strategy is, most of the functionality we're building [as a result of the PeopleSoft merger], we'll put into the EnterpriseOne family," Maegdlin says.

That doesn't necessarily mean that PeopleSoft is relegating World to the dust bin. About 4,750 midmarket companies around the world are using the PeopleSoft World product, compared with about 1,950 companies using EnterpriseOne. (More precisely, there are about 3,500 shops just using World and another 1,250 running a mixed World and One environment.) Outside of additional acquisitions for PeopleSoft (which, according to rumors, the company is pursuing in Germany), these 4,000-plus World users are essential to PeopleSoft's midmarket strategy. And PeopleSoft has committed to supporting the product indefinitely, as J.D. Edwards did in the fall of 2001.

Officials with PeopleSoft say the frequency of updates and enhancements that WorldSoftware users have seen over the past three years (200 per year) will likely increase under PeopleSoft's watch. The company is also making World-to-One migration tools available and is maintaining the ability for World users to gradually migrate to the EnterpriseOne code base in "coexistence" mode.

And all of the new capabilities that PeopleSoft has made available to the EnterpriseOne product will eventually be delivered as native OS/400 code. "We believe the iSeries is an important target market," Maegdlin says. "We will continue to aggressively build out the EnterpriseOne family, which will continue to drive iSeries."

In terms of the product roadmap, the message from PeopleSoft to J.D. Edwards' customers is clear. Companies that have upgraded from the World product will benefit from the acquisition, and companies that have chosen to stay on the World product won't see much of a change at all. Which is probably fine with most of them.