Microsoft Eyes PeopleSoft Customers

An anonymous reader writes "According to a couple articles, Microsoft has announced an intent to pick up some of the PeopleSoft customers currently fleeing from possible support contract increases and an uncertain future. What does it mean for the landscape of the ERP market if Microsoft starts being more competitive with its Axapta product?"

Comments

It's because...

[gardyloo]

...those people are so soft and squishy.

Re:It's because...

[frogger01]

you win the least sence made in one post award for 2005... would of hoped for more competition this early in the year, but i think that it's all wrapped up with that post

Re:It's because...

[Anonymous Coward]

least sence made in one post award for 2005

Do you realize the irony of your comment?

Re:It's because...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't speak for the poster, but I'm a moron. So please tell me, where's the irony. The friggin suspense is killing me.

Re:It's because...

[killjoe]

So are the Micros appparently.

Seriously though this is not a hat or a shoe or something. It's rather painful to try and change your HR app.

But then again MS can spread a lot of rolexes to a lot of CIOs who don't give a damn about the pain they will cause to everybody else.

Re:It's because...

[Anonymous Coward]

The suspence, you mean?

Re:It's because...

[stor]

My head asplode

Stor

PeopleSoft customers...

[sjrstory]

...Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own!

Re:PeopleSoft customers...

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the second thought I had. The first was of the great eye of Mordor casting its firey gaze upon its new target.

Umm, yeah!

[hendridm]

In other news, SuSe eyes Redhat customers, Carl Jrs eyes McDonalds' customers, and Bubs' Concessions Stand eyes Kmart customers.

hidden clause?

[frogger01]

people soft's hidden ELUA line:

"at any point we could be bought out by microsoft and your customer service could cease to exsist."

that'll learn all you blind-accept-button-pushers

Re:hidden clause?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right... except Peoplesoft was purchased by Oracle, not Microsoft, you knucklehead. And product support didn't go away, it just got more expensive.

Learn to read.

Re:hidden clause?

[Stevyn]

WTF is the End-License User Agreement? Another crazy tactic by Gates I'd imagine..

Actually, when I saw the headline for this article I thought of the scene where Mr. Anderson receives the phone from the FedEx guy and Morpheus gives him a call. Obviously, on the other end is Gates or perhaps Ballmer using the Microsoft Windows Speech Enhancer to disguise his voice.

"Customer Service...do you want to know what it is?"

Microsoft? ERP?

[Michael Hunt]

What ERP software does Microsoft have which is even capable of playing in this space? The products they acquired after the Great Plains acquisition certainly aren't (speaking as somebody who had to administer said package for several years in the early 21st century.)

One presumes MS know what they're doing, but this is certainly a weird gambit.

Higher Ed and Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

What about those of us using oracle behind our Higher Ed information systems. Supposedly it's already been designed to run on SQL Server so I guess MS doesn't even have to eye us, we are jumping in with both feet. Unless Oracle just plans to shut down that portion of Peoplesofts products, that's probably what will happen to us.

competition is good, usually

[crimethinker]

In general, if Microsoft is more competitive with its products, that will force PeopleSoft to improve theirs, or stop gouging for support contracts, or whatever.

However, based on MS's past behaviours, I think we can look forward to a "good enough" replacement for PeopleSoft to be built into the next version of Windows. MS will forbid OEM's to remove it because they don't want a "confusing user experience." Oh, and it will increase the "Microsoft tax" on your new PC that you were only going to load Linux on.

Don't get me wrong - I like competition, but I like fair competition, based on merits. It reminds me of my high-school football team; the football was some sort of "regulation size and colour," and so the high school chose its school colours such that one of them matched the ball colour perfectly. When we played home games, we got to pick whether we would wear the light or the dark-coloured jerseys, and of course, we chose the ones that matched the ball. It made it very difficult for the other players to tell who had the ball, and made diversionary fakes a lot easier. When we played away, our opponents would choose the dark colour, so that our team wore the light (and very contrasting) colour jerseys. Net result? We won a lot more home games, and by higher margins. Hardly what I'd call "fair."

Mod this -1, Long-winded.

-paul

Re:competition is good, usually

[Anonymous Coward]

>>In general, if Microsoft is more competitive with
>>its products, that will force PeopleSoft to
>>improve theirs, or stop gouging for support
>>contracts, or whatever.

Why do you bother replying if you have no clue as to the issues. PeopleSoft isn't improving anything.... they are being swallowed and digested by Oracle.

>>Mod this -1, Long-winded.

Mod this -5, Jack-ass

Re:competition is good, usually

[Strudelkugel]

Apple has 92 percent of the HD music player market. Apple desires a closed system for the iPod.

Google serves more than 90 percent of searches.

So why is Microsoft a monopoly while Apple and Google are not?

Answer: They haven't been sued yet. Not that litigation will determine they are monopolies, since they would hopefully deal with anti-trust complaints more effectively than Microsoft did. But that's about the only difference.

Re:competition is good, usually

[Anonymous Coward]

Try listening to music without an iPod - Easy
Try using the Internet without Google - Easy
Try buying a new PC without Windows - Impossible

Re:competition is good, usually

[Rakishi]

It's only bad when they use their monopoly in one area to force other products (bundled with windows) or use unfair tactics to take out competition (breaking compatibility, etc.).

Re:competition is good, usually

[bablooo]

However, based on MS's past behaviours, I think we can look forward to a "good enough" replacement for PeopleSoft to be built into the next version of Windows. MS will forbid OEM's to remove it because they don't want a "confusing user experience." Oh, and it will increase the "Microsoft tax" on your new PC that you were only going to load Linux on.

You have no idea what business PeopleSoft is in do you?

PeopleSoft makes Enterprise Resource Planning software. Microsoft has very little to compete in this segment of business. The big king here is SAP, the German ERP software maker that has 29% of the market. Oracle has bought PeopleSoft after 18 months of intense and hostile negotiation. Microsoft is eyeing PeopleSoft customers for it's Microsoft Business Solutions productline - which is hardly competition in near future.

Re:competition is good, usually

[curious.corn]

Try plugging in a MuVo in an Apple machine running iTunes.

Uh, oh! Surprise, it works! It even has it's own little icon (of course it's a brown little turd compared to the shiny white iPod icon)!
Poor thing, it asks me to sync all my library with the MuVo (it won't fit dear!) So I manage the playlists manually... and it works! Sheesh, would you believe it? Out of the box, no drivers, no frills... just the Apple experience, with the competition's hardware.
Oh, it can't play m4a and m4p... but, hey! the MuVo doesn't support it in the first place... should Apple flash it (if it were possible) on the fly to give it a chance against the iPod?
In any case, wasn't the iTMS a device to increase iPod sales? So tell me, why is iTunes integration working so well with competing hardware? Come on, I'm listening... can't hear you...

[... silence ...]

You see... the iPod is simply unbeatable... it just works, Apple doesn't need sleazy tactics to help the bottom line. It floats on its own.

About Google... well, you can use askjeeves... or altavista... why aren't you? Perhaps because they don't hold a candle against almighty google? Thought so...

M$ on the other hand KILLED BeOS (amongst other things) ... them bastards! I'll never forgive them for such a crime...

Re:competition is good, usually

[AstroDrabb]

However, based on MS's past behaviours, I think we can look forward to a "good enough" replacement for PeopleSoft to be built into the next version of Windows.

Huh? There is no way that MS would include a CRM solution in the next version of MS Windows. Good CRM solutions take a long time to build with a lot of customer feedback. MS' CRM solution cost them a lot of cash, MS is not just going to throw that into their next server release.

The MS CRM offering doesn't come close to PeopleSoft or SAP. I am a senior programmer for a fortune 500 with 140,000 employees. We recently finished a _very_ long deployment of PeopleSoft HR and PeopleSoft Portal. We looked at what MS had to offer and it didn't even come close. We looked at SAP and we looked at Oracle. All of our mission critical data is in Oracle and the not-to-important-data is in SQL Server or a few MySQL databases. We were actually leaning toward Oracle's product (because we use it as our critical DB), however they didn't have a few _very_ important functionalities that we need for our HR processes, so that left PeopleSoft and SAP.

Converting your whole HR/payroll process (especially when you pay 140,000+ employees every week) to any other system takes a ton of time and a ton of cash. We spent tens of millions on these two systems. There is no way in the world we would redo everything in an MS product.

Our systems are running great. We are about 2 versions behind on the latest PeopleSoft releases. We will probably just upgrade to the last PeopleSoft release and leave it alone. Every upgrade costs tons of money and time.

There is also the fact that were I work, all of our financial data and warehouse is _only_ in Oracle. Will the MS product allow you to work with a non-SQL Server DB (I doubt it)? There is no chance in H-E-L-L that we would take our critical data out of Oracle and put it in MS SQL Server. Then there is the issue of what technology MS built their system on. It has been out for a while, so I will assume it is in old ASP? No thank, we don't want that crap on our network. Java or ASP.Net/C# only please.

Re:competition is good, usually

[radish]

It might work with the MuVo, there's plenty it doesn't work with. But that's not the point, the point is whether Apple sold music (from iTMS) will play on any other player. No it won't. Reason? Apple don't want it to. They are being sued for exactly those uncompetitive practises right now.

You see... the iPod is simply unbeatable... it just works

Unless you want it to "work" for more than a few hours, or "work" with an OS other than Win/Mac, or "work" with additional music formats like OGG or FLAC, or "work" with albums that don't have gaps between tracks. That last one is a killer, my 5 year old $40 CD player works better than an iPod in that respect.

Apple doesn't need sleazy tactics to help the bottom line. It floats on its own.


Apple got the iPod to where it is today by a combination of excellent product design, fantastic advertising, great product placement and good timing. Not by any kind of technical merit. The current 4gen iPods offer virtually nothing in the way of significant features over the original, and are way behind almost all of their competitors.

I wish Apple luck, and they deserve all the success they are having, but many of us know the iPod is like the XP of the mp3 player world, it's shiny, it's easy to use, but underneath it's less than impressive.

Re:competition is good, usually

[Anonymous Coward]

1.) Ogg and Flac are a 'nice idea' but ultimately worthless to 90% of the people who buy ipods anyway. I could care less that ipods cannot play my oggs (of which I have 4) and can't play flac (that I own two of, and it took hours to decode).

I don't see it as a loss at all. It's merely a chance for someone to innovate and make a better product.

Ipod works fine with cd's that have track skips, do the 'combine merge' option on the itunes and it fixes it. it's not the nicest solution, but it works.

Re:competition is good, usually

[jellomizer]

Well there are some slight differences.

First Microsoft vs. Apple Ipod. The I Pod is a Music Player. Although Nice to have it is not a necessity to most peoples everyday life. While Microsoft windows has became more of an infrastructure to daily life for home and business it is much like the telephone system now. People need to write papers and more accept the .DOC format then a PDF. Go to the store almost all the programs are for Windows. Anyone who makes a product that would compete with Microsoft direction Microsoft will make people fear their product or force manufactures to drop it. While it is getting better we still need Microsoft to complete parts of our lives. While we can listen to music in many different ways.

Microsoft vs. Google. Windows Cost money to legally operate, Word costs money. Google is a free service. If a better services comes along people would switch. It is also a thing that we are not forced to use google at most work places. You are free to go to yahoo or others.

In some ways you are right the reason is that Apple and Google haven't been sued for antitrust suits yet. But the reason is that they haven't been sued is because they haven't broken any anti-trust laws. Having 90% market share alone doesn't make you a monopoly. Having 90% market share and actively stopping consumers from switching is.

Think of this senerio...
GM has 90% of the market share of cars. But the other 10% are using other consumers. Ok GM is just a popular car. But if they switched to Ford they will still be able to ride the same roads fill at the same gas station.

But if GM was like Microsoft, The majority of the infrastructure roads, gas stations will only work for GM cars, And if the competitor made there vehecials compatible they will get sued out of business because of 1 GMs size and 2 they own the rights on all the specs so making a copy will break patented etc.

So the other cars will end up more expensive to run because they are forced to drive around the GM infrastructure.

Re:competition is good, usually

[gellenburg]

Try buying a new PC without Windows - Impossible

Not if said person buys a Mac. :-)

Oh wait, are you saying that my Mac isn't a PC? Would that be PC as in personal computer or PC as in politically correct? Either way, I'd venture to say that any Mac is much more personal and correct than anything Intel or AMD can put out.

Re:competition is good, usually

[ckaminski]

Once you get past the OS and the Internet Information Server, MS has ZERO hold on the horizontal server enterprise application market, so any competition they can bring is by definition "fair". As fair as anything Oracle and SAP will let them get away with. If it brings costs down for the end-user, that's only good for the end-user.

Re:competition is good, usually

[gkuz]

Apple got the iPod to where it is today by a combination of excellent product design ... Not by any kind of technical merit.

Just a nit, but industrial design (which Apple have always been good at) is a technical issue. The fact that Apple has understood that has helped them to be profitable.

Re:competition is good, usually

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean besides going to a small mom and pop store like Walmart? You can't keep copy and pasting responses from 4 years ago and expect them to still be applicable.

Re:competition is good, usually

[generic-man]

I was under the impression that Apple killed BeOS. Be Inc. wanted the specs on the G3 (G4?) processor, and Apple wouldn't let Be create a commercial operating system that would run on Apple hardware.

I invested in Be Inc., and I've learned my lesson from the experience. Never invest in a company run by a crazy Frenchman like Jean-Louis Gassée.

Re:competition is good, usually

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see it as a loss at all.

I do. Everything I've burned myself is in Ogg Vorbis or FLAC. I could do without Ogg Vorbis, but not without FLAC. I wouldn't buy an Apple product anyway, because their product has a distinctive software side, and I don't want anything to replace the software I'm using.

The big deal here is that since the iPod won't play FLAC or Ogg Vorbis, iPod owners won't rip tracks into those formats. They'll choose something their player can play, which gives Apple a terrific advantage with their AAC format.

Now, an Apple shill will say, "but AAC is already pretty good. It ranks consistantly better than most of the other formats, when it doesn't rank better than them all. You probably don't have the ears to distinguish between AAC, OGG, and MP3 anyway." Perhaps so, perhaps not, but it's disturbing to see that some people think that "Company X is taking care of me." [Note the the parent: I'm not calling you an Apple shill.]

It's no more difficult to put a FLAC decoder onto a device than it is to put a WMA decoder; they're both just pieces of software. There surely are players that don't have the free space to put another decoder onto their player, but I doubt this is the case with the iPod. Apple doesn't want the competition.

This is a solved problem for myself anyway. I'm not going to buy an iPod, period. Probably when I have some cash, I'll build my own player. I have the technical knowledge to do it, and there are designs on the web anyway. Maybe I'll get some nice plastic pieces to go around it. It'll have more utility to me than any player I could buy.

Re:competition is good, usually

[NotoriousQ]

Try buying a Mac without Itunes installed.

If the macs had a majority of the desktops at this point, the iTMS would become a monopoly.

iPods high marketshare does not indicate a monopoly of itself, since nothing is pushing its use. However if apple used iPods dominance to push another market, it may find itself in deep water.

Has nothing to do with the ease of avoidance. It has all to do with amount of market influence. A product influencing its own market is fine. A prodict influencing another market is usually not fine.

Re:competition is good, usually

[NotoriousQ]

Just to make a little point.

Apple does not own AAC. Fraunhofer (IIRC) owns that. It is just the next generation of mp3, by virtue of being an accepted compressed audio in MPEG-4.

Apple has nothing to gain by pushing the format.

Why did they not include Ogg Vorbis or FLAC? I do not know. I suppose their contracs may prohibit those formats for some reason. Or perhaps they are dumb, or there is a technical limitation which they could not solve (meaning they are either cheap or dumb).

In either case -- that is their decision. From my point, all the people that come for my advice on gadgets get a complete rundown on the difference between iPod and the competitors. The people with which I have spoken with have both both the iPod and the other players knowing the options.

As for me. I will not buy an iPod. FLAC and Vorbis support for one. And the wrong image I will send to other people for two. Of course I am not in the music listening demographic...so Apple does not care about me anyway.

Re:competition is good, usually

[drsmithy]

Try buying a new PC without Windows - Impossible

You misspelled "trivial". HTH.

Re:competition is good, usually

[Scudsucker]

But that's not the point, the point is whether Apple sold music (from iTMS) will play on any other player. No it won't. Reason? Apple don't want it to. They are being sued for exactly those uncompetitive practises right now.

This is a bunch of nonsense. WTF were the people bitching about Sony being anti-compeditive for supporting just ONE format while the iPod supports at LEAST three open formats: aac, mp3 and wav. This is no more anticompeditive than Nintendo releasing games only for the Nintendo.

Re:competition is good, usually

[quarkscat]

While this is slightly OT, your comparison
to automobiles (and GM) are right on target,
for a different reason.

Electric and solar powered vehicles will never
make it into the mainstream USA auto market
because the corporate control over the energy
source(s) would be weakened. That is the reason
why hydrogen powered vehicles are being touted --
and foolishly at that. The hydrogen fuel cell
is a lock-in to the current and evolving energy
distribution system, but will be extracting
most of that hydrogen gas from hydrocarbon-based
energy (oil/gas/coal) instead of water (H2O).
The single most common molecule on planet Earth
abandoned for a non-renewable energy source
that provides the mega-corporations with a lock-
in with their current customers.

Re:competition is good, usually

[radish]

Would it be fair if the only software company making video games only supported one manufacturer's hardware? And those companies were related?

Having a monopoly (and iTMS does have a pretty near monopoly on legal music downloads) changes the rules, as Microsoft have found out. Much of what MS have run in to trouble over would be perfectly fine, IF they weren't so dominant.

Re:competition is good, usually

[lachlan76]

"work" with an OS other than Win/Mac,

I just copied my new Silverchair album from my Linux PC to my iPod mini using gtkpod. It works fine, your point is not valid.

Re:competition is good, usually

[mattyrobinson69]

amarok 1.2 beta has integrated ipod support too, according to the newsletter i got yesterday.

Re:competition is good, usually

[GraemeDonaldson]

Apple has 92 percent of the HD music player market. Apple desires a closed system for the iPod. Google serves more than 90 percent of searches. So why is Microsoft a monopoly while Apple and Google are not?

Having a monopoly is not illegal in and of itself. Leveraging your monopoly in one market to gain a competitive advantage in a different market, that's the problem.

Re:competition is good, usually

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Having 90% market share alone doesn't make you a monopoly. Having 90% market share and actively stopping consumers from switching is.

Sorry, but this is just not true... Monopoly means lack of competition and substitutes (so a 90% market share pretty much makes you a monopoly). Usually there are also barriers to market entry, but I've never seen a definition that contained "actively stopping your customers from switching".

Re:competition is good, usually

[curious.corn]

Nope, Microsoft did. At the time Be Inc. gave away the free edition for download it also tried to get BeOS preinstalled on manufactured pee cees. Of course, given the stranglehold Microsoft has on the market, nobody dared to introduce BeOS preloaded or dual booting machines as that would breach the confidential OEM agreement that every single manufacturer has. Of course, voiding this agreement would oblige the OEM to give up Windows preloading on ALL its product line, forcing it, at most, to bundle a boxed, full price, Windows license. That would have raped the already razor thin margins on sales, so nobody ever took the option seriously. All I can recall is someone actually putting BeOS in a partition and adding an exe in some nested menu to reboot into it, guess how effective it was... (BeOS a kludge to boot, unrecognized partition, consumers worried that the drive is giving the ghost...)

Remember the very first days of the Athlon when no mobo manufacturer (Asus) dared to release supporting boards? Were they afraid their intel chipset source would dry up together with the pre launch chip samples so fundamental to design products in time?

That's sleazy to me, and in no way does it compare to Apple, iTMS, and the mp3 player scene. For one, it's a nascent market that hasn't settled yet. Second, mp3 players predating the iPod wouldn't take off because of their kludge, bad design and ridiculous price (that is, no bloody C*O really cared or believed in this market, only after Apple's smash hit did they correct the clueless powerpoints). Third, iPod competitors can't hold a candle against the original although they all try to imitate it to some extent. Fourth, there are alternatives to iTMS; although with sucky user inerface, laden of obtuse DRM and more expensive. Fifth, within the most common usage pattern of iTunes (that is non iTMS, plain mp3 collection managment & ripping), the Apple product currently supports foreign competing Hardware providing a better user eperience than it's original bundled software. It's not Apple's fault that MusicMatch and WMP are such a crapload... To me, that is fair play; tough, but way within the rules.

No, I'm not a fanboy. I didn't expect the MuVo to work in iTunes, actually I had just borrowed it as a pen drive. Having it pop up in iTunes freaked me out... I myself am so cynical that never I'd have expected it to play fairly.

Re:competition is good, usually

[cluelessG]

some products of Microsoft Business Solutions actually allow you to use Oracle DB - for example Axapta. But that's only because it was developed by Damgaard and not by Microsoft.

Re:competition is good, usually

[chiph]

In addition to what the others have said, one thing that killed Be was back when Apple was shopping for a new OS, they wanted $400 million, which is more than Apple's board was willing to pay. So the deal didn't happen, and Be closed up.

Kind of a shame -- any shop that tosses old CRT monitors off the roof of their building looked like a fun place to work.

Chip H.

Re:competition is good, usually

[Acer500]

Try buying a new PC without Windows - Impossible

Only if you live in the US.

Us Third Worlders are increasingly being sold Linux boxes or no-OS boxes (on which a pirated Windows is usually installed afterwards).

For something on-topic: There are several companies over here using Microsofts Great Plains package. So its not so far-fetched for others to consider switching.

Re:competition is good, usually

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem that remains is what to do when Oracle starts ramping up the support contract costs because they want to push you to their platform rather than support some other product they acquired.

Certainly Microsoft doesn't have the offering yet but the fact that they are making an actual marketing attempt must at least signal some intrest of theirs in entering that market.

Also Oracle licensing fees might be fine for a fortune 500 company but might be harder to swallow for smaller businesses.

Re:competition is good, usually

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a PC without Windows. It wasn't very hard at all. I had to install some hardware myself, but that's not very difficult. If you're so worried about the technicalities of the software that your PC comes with, why aren't you worried about the tech of the hardware as well. You're never really sure what you get in a prepacked computer. They frequently have some wacky scheme preventing you from installing a new vid card or something like that. I'll admit they've gotten better about this in the past few years, but why do you have to buy a wholly assembled computer in the first place. If you're competent enough to install and run Linux, I'm sure you can install a HD and some RAM. I believe Pricewatch has a section devoted to OS-less PC's, haven't looked in a while, not in the market, but it's not really as difficult as you would imply. You just don't like MS and would like to give the impression that there's no other options while you praise the usefulness of other options.

Re:competition is good, usually

[alw53]

They don't have restrictive "agreements" with their vendors to the effect that a hard drive shipped with Windoze cannot be shipped with anything else? They haven't stolen operating systems code, pen technology, disk compression technology, audio transmission technology, driven the people they stole it from out of business, and settled the resultant lawsuits out of court so they could seal the terms of the settlements?

They don't say things like "when you're trying to kill someone, just smile and pull the trigger"?

They don't subsidize the competitors of their competitors, like Microsoft did with SCO?

They don't bug their competition's hotel rooms?

I'm just guessing here...

Re:competition is good, usually

[Strudelkugel]

I've been buying PCs without an OS for years. Just go to a whitebox PC store and ask for a system without an OS. People keep trotting out this excuse, yet it is totally invalid.

Just because people don't know how to shop intelligently does not mean Microsoft is a monopoly.

Re:competition is good, usually

[Strudelkugel]

Google is a free service

Not if you need to advertise on it. Business have to go to Google if they want get exposure on the web by virtue of Googles dominance. Google is currently a legal monopoly. That could change as soon as they are sued, however.

I have no more problem with Google's dominance than I do with Microsoft, since I can use the products of both companies beneficially. If I don't want to use a Microsoft product, I can switch disks, or run a VM to use/not use a Microsoft product.

People on /. rant constantly about intrusive government, the *AA, etc. Yet when it comes to Microsoft, they embrace intrusion. Yes, Microsoft has engaged in excessive business practices, but I think one could make the same claim regarding Apple and the iPod, or Google and the superclass of stock meant to maintain control of the company with the founders and a few other insiders.

If you want to see what monopolies are all about, check out the history of Standard Oil. Microsoft has never been close to that kind of monopoly. The case against Microsoft was largely political and instigated by its competitors. I'm skeptical that it did that it made much difference.

Re:competition is good, usually

[ahdeoz]

Nope, I sold no-OS and Linux systems in the bad old days of 1998. I still got an OEM discount for my Windows software. Granted, it wasn't anything like Dell or Compaq's discount.

Re:competition is good, usually

[DK_SplatMan]

You have no idea what business PeopleSoft is in do you?

You have no idea what products MBS provide do you ? ;-)

A couple of years ago they purchased a company in Denmark called "Navision Damgaard". That company is now a major part of MBS. They hold the two key-products "Navision Attain" and "Concorde Axapta". These products are not initially developed by Microsoft, and are stable, mature, and technologically quite reasonable products.

The sales of those products in the US are booming, even though the products are not very well known yet. The reason is, that even though I hold no special love for Bill Gates or Microsoft, I have to admit that the products from the former Navision Damgaard company actually are quite good.

Like it or not, but they actually have a decent chance at pulling this off. There are thousands of IT professionals in Europe with Navision/Axapta certifications who would love to go to the states for a couple of years, train others, complete a few projects, and make a small fortune. I am not one of them - but trust me ... they will come ...

Resistance is futile ... ;-)

Re:competition is good, usually

[runderwo]

That'd be strange, considering PPC is an open architecture with freely available documentation, and Gassee was ex-Apple CEO. You're telling me he pulled zero weight with his old company on getting documentation, for an open architecture, in an effort that would only sell more Apple hardware in the end?

Re:competition is good, usually

[curious.corn]

Nope, iTMS doesn't have a monopoly on music downloads, the Majors have it as they are the content owners. Tell me, why don't people sign up in droves for New Napster? It has the content after all, doesn't it? Is it because it's package & usage design is poor? Is it because the tracks don't necessarily play on anyone's WMA portable gizmo? Dell Axims, MuVos, WMA compat cell phones, whatever crap the latest CES puked out are supposedly in the position to crush anything else, don't they?

Take it with the bloody RIAA affiliates if your little gizmo can't play Britney's latest must buy... and by the way, you can still drive to the mall, buy the CD & rip it to your gizmo. It's not like you're strongarmed to buy an iPod to access music as in with Office documents.

iPod not supporting OGG is, unfortunately, a useless argument. Shure, you're free to discriminate against this feature but... except for the usual 99% doesn't care argument (which doesn't vibe with the /. crowd, justly so...) there are engineering reasons for it. Come on pal, everyone bickers for 3d ipods' battery life; just adding a somewhat hacked up RTC'alike ate in the power budget badly. iPods have custom chips optimized for a format and guess what will it be: the most mainstream and future proof, won't it? So why the hell an engineer must struggle to cut out some precious gate count & power juice to get anyone's nerdy pet format supported? It's tough but live with it unless you don't want to lug a pentium4 general purpouse processor in your pocket.

OGG is good, shure & true. I'd love to have OGG supported but it won't happen unless it gets more mainstream. It will get so when the industry will invest into it and it will take time just like with Mozilla & Firefox.

Again, Apple is NOT dominant. It takes the lion's share, but noone's coerced to buy into it. Listen, I bought a song of iTMS some time ago. I didn't like the artifacts clearly audible on the iPod's superior analogue output & transducers. I drove to the mall and bought the only CD of the artist that wasn't GODDAM DRMd.

That's it

Re:competition is good, usually

[generic-man]

All I'm telling you is "never invest in a company founded by a crazy Frenchman."

Choose open source ERP

[iPaqMan]

Corporations loath vendor lock-in as much as you or I. Why haven't open source ERP packages, like compiere (http://www.compiere.org/), taken off???

Re:Choose open source ERP

[bstadil]

Why haven't open source ERP packages, like compiere (http://www.compiere.org/), taken off???

One reason is that until very recently you needed Oracle DB to run Compiere. There is a slew of new FOOS DB's in the works for Compiere most interesting it Fyracle the Oracle Mode Firebird

Re:Choose open source ERP

[Michael Hunt]

Whilst corporations loathe vendor lockin, they love accoutability, especially for huge, towering vertical monoliths of software packages such as ERPs.

If my ERP breaks, I don't have time to read mailing lists and ask in IRC channels for somebody to help me write a patch. I want a butt connected with my boot, preferably somebody senior representing the vendor, and then I want a fix available in a time which meets my SLA.

Anything less is unacceptable.

Re:Choose open source ERP

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is going to volunteer to keep up with the tax changes for all the localities in the US, Europe, Canada, Mexico, etc and generate timely updates to all their users? I pity the poor sod who thinks he can keep up with the PA tax laws in his spare time.

Re:Choose open source ERP

[killjoe]

To be more precise people love the illusion of accountability. If your ERP breaks peoplesoft will not do anything for you. You will though get to blame them to the board and they won't hear you cos they are sleeping or scheming to rip off the shareholders.

Re:Choose open source ERP

[Anonymous Coward]

If you compiled and installed the stuff yourself, sure you're going to end up on mailing lists and fixing stuff yourself, but that's the road you chose.

If you really want support, then hire a fucking company to support the software jackass! If no one supports it, it's probably not the best package out there is it?

Besides, support from large companies is hit or miss. We had a HORRIBLE time with HP support before we finally explained we were doing work at a large govt agency, and then all of a sudden they were willing to help! If you're a small company, support contracts beyond just a telephone number you can call for simple advice usually arn't worth it.

Re:Choose open source ERP

[grozzie2]

The reality is, you want somebody to blame, so you can pass the buck. If you were truely interested in a cost effective solution, you would take 1/3 of the monthly support payments you send to peoplesoft, and use it to support folks on the open source projects. No more reading mailing lists, and no more begging for help in irc channels, you have knowledgable, expert support, merely a phone call or email away. When there is a problem, you'll probably get a fix slipstreamed within 24 hours, vs what you get from ps, a series of meetings, evaluation, and then a decision if they will bother to fix or not, and if they do, a schedule for deployment sometime in the next quarter.

Never ceases to amaze me how many folks want commercial grade support, for open source products, but, want it for free. Folks serious about using open source, pay monthly retainers to open source developers. For that, they get industrial grade software, with lots of input to the development direction, and in general, support is only a phone call or email away.

Re:Choose open source ERP

[Gob Gob]

> I want a butt connected with my boot,

I laughed!!

> preferably somebody *senior* representing the vendor,

(*) Emp mine.

I laughed some more....

And then I cried..... ....then you removed your boot.

Re:Choose open source ERP

[Anonymous Coward]

They are also working on a port to PostgreSQL.

And for the type of thing that Compier offers Oracle license is chump change.

Small to mid-sized business enviroment with platform independant Java tools providing tracking, inventory, customer profile handling and store frontend capabilities.

good stuff. It'll run on anything that is certified for Oracle databases and has a java implimentation. So that means Linux or Windows. Also possibly OS X or Solaris if you wanted, too.

The front-ends can be anything that is java capable, OS X, Linux, Windows, anything.

Except for the Oracle database it is the very model of not locking yourself into a vendor while still having your vertical software stack cake and eating it too!

Re:Choose open source ERP

[wannabgeek]

Most of the open source (or free software anyway) is done by developers to solve the problems they face individually. It could _also_ solve the problem of community but the the big motivation is personal itch. IMHO, ERP software does not solve any problem the hacker community faces. That could be one reason why it may not get too much interest.

You could argue what stops a company from making an open source ERP software. I don't know...

Re:Choose open source ERP

[bit01]

Anything less is unacceptable.

As another poster says, it's all about passing the buck.

I've been on the client and vending end of hundreds of support contracts.

Hardware support contracts can be expensive but are worthwhile if uptime is critical, mainly because you tend to get fast access to spare parts.

Software support contracts however are a complete waste of time and money. About all they're good for is couriering replacement media. If the software has a heisenbug it will never be fixed ("we can't reproduce that bug"). If it has a design bug it will never be fixed ("that's not a bug"). If it has a functional bug that requires more than a one line change it will never be fixed ("here's a really hacky workaround. Oh, you're already doing that?"). If it has a functional bug that can be fixed with a one line change then, if you're lucky, you'll see it in the next major release of the software in 6 months time, at the same time as the other customers not on a support contract ("we're regression testing the fix ...").

If you don't have the expertese to support it yourself then you certainly don't have the expertese to know when your vendor is bullshitting you. As they certainly will because they're trying to maximise their profit and minimise their costs after getting their hooks into you.

Employing a third-party part/full timer for software support is far more cost effective, flexible and fast.

Open source wins for support. People who talk about closed source software vendor support contracts being worthwhile are either clueless or in marketing.

---

Commercial software bigots - a dying breed.

Re:Choose open source ERP

[thparker]

To be more precise people love the illusion of accountability. If your ERP breaks peoplesoft will not do anything for you.

Duh. That's why you hire consultatnts. So you have someone to blame. And sue.

Re:Choose open source ERP

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, many people wanted a complete open-source solution. Now they can use MaxDB, MySQL's SAP-certified open DB. And they can get all the support too: http://www.infosecuresystems.com/micompiere.htm

Re:Choose open source ERP

[jacobcaz]

• When there is a problem, you'll probably get a fix slipstreamed within 24 hours, vs what you get from ps, a series of meetings, evaluation, and then a decision if they will bother to fix or not, and if they do, a schedule for deployment sometime in the next quarter.

It really depends on the case and whether or not the critical incident is a software bug or something else. When I've opened P1 cases with PeopleSoft I've had excellent and extremely responsive service from their analysts.

In the few cases where a software patch was needed, the analyst worked with me to ensure that a viable workaround was in place so that we could continue to process transactions while a patch was created.

Re:Choose open source ERP

[sql*kitten]

Why haven't open source ERP packages, like compiere (http://www.compiere.org/), taken off???

1) ERP packages are insanely complicated (because they model real-world processes that are themselves insanely complicated). You need a LOT of vendor/consultant support to implement them. In some cases it is easier and cheaper to restructure your business around SAP instead of vice versa, it's that involved.

2) If you have SAP then you do get the source code for it, which your army of overpriced Accenture drones will customize for you. If you don't have SAP then the source code is not really any good for you, because you'd still need said expensive army to implement it, and if you can afford them you can easily afford to just buy it.

3) SAP et al have a critical mass behind them. If SAP AG went out of business tomorrow, there are legions of third-party firms, from giants like Accenture to one-man shops who can perform maintenance and modifications, depending on the scale of what you want. Same with Oracle. Can you guarantee that in 20 years time there'll be a ready supply of Compiere experts around?

heh

[Anonymous Coward]

"...fleeing possible service contract increases and and uncertain future...."

Yeah - for definite price increases and certain reaming....

"Microsoft Eyes Peoplesoft Customers"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like saying 'serial killer eyes next victim.'

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[cbelt3]

Yeah sure. Like they did so well with Microsoft Money. Let's face it- they don't know beans about financial software, much less ERP. And they don't have the galactic network of partners and pimps like the other bigs do. So they'll jump in, lose their assets, and jump out. Like they always do. Windows, Office. That's pretty much it.

Axapta?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice, but Microsoft has always been traditionally lax on its enterprise business software side. CRM, ERP and accounting stuff have never been its strongpoint. While it's bought itself into these markets in recent years (Great Plains acquisitions etc.) it's not got to the point where it's fully integrated these bought-in products into its product line successfully.

So while they could hoover up fleeing Peoplesoft customers, they're currently not selling them a de facto MS product. Some might see this as good, but in all honesty, recently acquired software tends to be the old stuff with a sticker on it.

The MS selling point of full integration with other MS products won't be there yet, at least not in current versions...

Re:Axapta?

[Anonymous Coward]

Axapta, nothing says employee friendly like enterprise software with a name that has Ax in it.

Common sense?

[moz25]

I don't see what's special about this... it makes normal business sense to pick up customers that may be becoming available... it's not even typically unethical in my opinion.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Michael Hunt]

I would find that amusing. Especially if it lead, directly or indirectly, to the falling-by-the-wayside-with-vultures-circling-the- carcass of Great Plains packages such as Solomon. Three years on and I'm still scarred.

VB3! IT WAS WRITTEN IN VB3 FFS!!!!

Not bloody likely many will switch

[winkydink]

Shepherd further noted that companies that have spent millions of dollars on their PeopleSoft business systems are unlikely to tear out those systems and start over just because Microsoft is offering a discount.

The Microsoft offer "is barely worth the paper the press release was written on," Shepherd said. I think the end of the article sums it up succinctly.

Re:Not bloody likely many will switch

[ScentCone]

Shepherd further noted that companies that have spent millions of dollars on their PeopleSoft business systems are unlikely to tear out those systems and start over just because Microsoft is offering a discount

The partners and consultants that would facilitate just such a transition won't even be looking at prospective users/customers unless they are growing and likely to continue to. That means change in the enterprise anyway, and that means the budget to do something about it. Remember, most companies using a big bad PeopleSoft installation didn't buy a copy of it the day they decided to go into business: they migrated to it from something else once upon a time, and know that there are reasons to change the landscape. Especially when people are building "vertical" extensions and practices around these MS solutions/acquired products.

Believe me: it doesn't take many Fotune 1000 companies to switch to make MS's consulting partners and VARs plenty happy.

This might not exactly be the case

[Anonymous Coward]

"What does it mean for the landscape... if .... competitive.. Axapta..?"

The question isnt: What does it mean for the landscape? it is: will there be a lanscape left post Axaptar.

This landscape may infact surrender to its new surrounding environment faster than you can say hello, reffering to the hitchu tribe way of saying hello, which is indeed very long and hard, and could be time consuming as well. Infact, it may take forever. Unless, it doesnt.

Just my 2 pecs.

AA

PeopleSoft? Axapta?

[JessLeah]

Am I the only one left who has no fucking clue what PeopleSoft is or what Axapta is? Is this some sort of database thing? (No, I don't want to Google; somebody give me the Cliff's Notes version... I'm a lazy stupid American ;) )

Re:PeopleSoft? Axapta?

[Anonymous Coward]

Short version: PeopleSoft is ERP software that sits on top of just about any database out there (we run on top of Oracle where I work; I was working on top of SQL Server today in a class I'm taking. I know it runs on DB2, and it's built to be platform independent.) ERP software is what large and medium businesses (maybe small businesses too, but I don't see a small business tossing down a couple million to get a PS installation) use to track everything from the wage one gets paid to the pens used by the secretaries to the orders going out the door.

Re:PeopleSoft? Axapta?

[Anonymous Coward]

This IS a stupid question, but I'd like to ask anyway...

Are there any open source ERP solutions? Seems like a good opportunity for the OSS community to jump in.

Re:PeopleSoft? Axapta?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Am I the only one left who has no fucking clue what PeopleSoft is

This is PeopleSoft:

You're looking for a job, and each of the potential employeers have a brand new Job website, but they all look strangly familar. You find job you like and decide to apply. You need to register for an account. Ok, type in Username, email address, password, and password again to verify.

Ok, it's sending an email to you to verify your email address. 5 minutes later, the email isn't there. An hour later you are still waiting. Hmmm... 2 hours later email still isn't there. OK, time to go outside. I'll apply for this job tomorrow.

Next day, you finally get an email from "Peoplesoft " with your account information. Great!

You log in, and fill out a couple small forms. Cool! They let you submit your resume and they'll automatically populate the webform using the contents of your resume! Oops! Your resume is in RTF or PDF format and their website only accepts MS Word documents. Fuck... but this is for a Unix sysadmin job. Ok, well I have a pirated version of MS Word around here somewhere...

So you reformat your resume using MS Word, and submit it to the Resume wizard. Dang, the stupid wizard put your job title as "TheLastCompany IworkedAt, Inc", the company name as "2003, 2004" and it trimmed off the last few lines describing all your job duties... dang I need to fix that up. Maybe it would have been better to type in all this stuff by hand in the first place...

WHen you're done with all the manual editing and hit the Submit button, you feel like you accomplished something.

And immediately afterwards, an email is sent to the HR STaff, and PeopleSoft has fucked up the formatting so much it looks worse then the ASCII rendering of the goatse.cx image... the HR assistant prints out your resume and adds it to the stack of 300 other resumes for a dozen different positions.

Later, you don't aren't considered for the job because you wrote a sentence in proper English like this:


"Researched, designed and configured web load balancing scheme using Apache webserver."


Some fucktard got the job instead, because they
wrote a resume to receive a high score with the keyword "Apache" and "Load balancing", like this:

"Researched load balancing scheme using Apache webserver"
"Designed load balancing scheme using Apache webserver"
"Configured load balancing scheme using Apache webserver"
"I'ma fucking apache god. APACHE APACHE APACHE APACHE"


That, my friend, is PeopleSoft.

Re:PeopleSoft? Axapta?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. There are none. If there were, they wouldn't last. And no one in their right mind would want to use one. Ever.

See this (much deservered) +5 Insightful post for a better understand of the issues

Long story short: the volunteer coders would need to put together a project where: "The system flexability, business knowledge requirements, legal issues, tax issues, GAAP requirements, Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, etc. would overwhelm any small team.", all with 24x7x365 support

Anonymous to avoid stealing the author's well-deserved kudos.

Re:PeopleSoft? Axapta?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is GNU Enterprise, but all of the reasons listed would keep it from being used from all but a small business. You do get the source for all the backend Cobol and SQR jobs as well as the PeopleCode that contains the business logic for each panel or webpage. All of which is needed because generally there is no 'vanilla' ERP installation. They all have some customization done to them and that's why implementations cost the big bucks.

Re:PeopleSoft? Axapta?

[ChatHuant]

Am I the only one left who has no fucking clue what PeopleSoft is or what Axapta is? Is this some sort of database thing?

Axapta is an ERP system. It was originally started in Denmark by a company called Damgaard. The company merged with Navision Software in 2000, and Navision was then purchased by Microsoft.

It's a powerful package; AFAIK it can run on either Oracle or SQL Server.

You can find a detailed review here or, if you only want the differences from other products, go here.

Re:PeopleSoft? Axapta?

[Anonymous Coward]

> AFAIK it can run on either Oracle or SQL Server.

I think it's a safe bet that it runs only on SQL Server now.

Re:PeopleSoft? Axapta?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Am I the only one left who has no fucking clue what PeopleSoft is"

Honestly, if you're in the computer industry and you don't know what "Peoplesoft" is or what it does, then you're not *really* in the computer industry... you're a wanna-be.

Re:PeopleSoft? Axapta?

[theAtomicFireball]

Oooooh... sounds like somebody's bitter and out of work.

PeopleSoft eRecruit is certainly one of the more-hyped aspects of their HRMS suite (which is just one of PeopleSoft's product lines), and it is one that it is relatively easy to find fault with (I could go on for days, in great detail). However, having been involved with eRecruit in several capacities (I've been hired through it, been a hiring manager and interviewer using it, implemented it, customized it, and was the troubleshooter brought in to unfuck a whole bunch of really bad code that made it into the shipped product (yes, I worked at PeopleSoft before the dark times...), I can say with certainty that the above description assumes that an unqualified and rather stupid applicant got passed over by an unqualified and rather stupid hiring manager for a job that was filled by a different unqualified and rather stupid applicant and the whole transaction happened using a PeopleSoft system implemented by rather stupid and unqualified consultants (sorry, was that last bit redundant?).

Define a system by its problems... not by yours. The fact that you can't get a job is not PeopleSoft's fault.

Re:PeopleSoft? Axapta?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Oooooh... sounds like somebody's bitter and out of work.

Hey there, it's a joke... laugh.

I am employeed (no thanks to PeopleSoft), and I usually get a job offer if I can get my foot in the door. Trouble is,

Sure I'm bitter, but that's because the only time I notice PeopleSoft software is because it's in my way-- today I couldn't enter my vacation hours because I'm getting 500 errors in the new PS system. And I've seen some of the results that HR passed on because eRecruit said it was a good match-- and yes, they really did print out a ton of ASCII Resumes...

Sure, I realize that PS produces decent software, and these are implementation problems, but it's pretty clear that the PeopleSoft salesfolks oversell the capabilities of their software, and the decisions to implement are made by HR managers who don't understand what "Keyword ranking" means.

Plus, I've had one too many drinks with some engineers over at PS, and with PS customers who work with implementing PS at several large institutions (But they don't trust the results that it provides for hiring searches).

Re:PeopleSoft? Axapta?

[cluelessG]

It still runs on Oracle. Microsoft highly recommends running Axapta on SQL Server though. The new version (Axapta 4.0) is coming out in June or July and will see what happens with support of Oracle DB then.

Mod down, anti-semitic content

[Anonymous Coward]

(nt)

Re:Mod down, anti-semitic content

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you wouldn't complain if it were an anti-Muslim troll now would you?

Obviously. Most camel fuckers want us dead. Most Jews do not.

Re:Computerworld slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent is troll, bolds spell 'jews belong in ovens', mod accordingly. Ta.

As a user of both Microsoft & Peoplesoft produ

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Hmmm... with Microsoft web products, I often get 500 errors.

My employeer launched their new Peoplesoft HR website last month, and I 500 errors every couple of clicks...

So, since MS is really good at serving 500 errors, I'm sure they will be an excellent replacement for Peoplesoft's products.

the difference, don't buy FUD.

[twitter]

In other news, SuSe eyes Redhat customers, Carl Jrs eyes McDonalds' customers, and Bubs' Concessions Stand eyes Kmart customers.

Few other companies care to use FUD marketing of the sort Microsoft is the master of. Novel may indeed want Red Hat customers, but they are not going to make an announcement of Red Hat's impending doom that will be echoed by an unbelievable chorus of PC pulp pushers and pundits with Dido qualifications. The uncertainty here is about as manufactured as IBM's supposed abandonment of OS/2 before M$ was able to get it's next OS in order. In that case, the same pundits did the same kind of echoing and were dead wrong. IBM's sales of OS/2 were greater than any other software available at the time and they held onto OS/2 for years and several releases afterwards.

Re:the difference, don't buy FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Few other companies care to use FUD marketing of the sort Microsoft is the master of. Novel may indeed want Red Hat customers, but they are not going to make an announcement of Red Hat's impending doom"

That's cause the OSS crowd isn't considered a company :)

'scuse you.

[Soko]

"ERP".

Bill, excuse yourself after you eat, please. Gosh. That's not right.

Soko

Legal View

[Maljin Jolt]

Oracle should sue Microsoft for hostile takeover of Peoplesoft customers.

Re:Fuck all of you

[frogger01]

MS is never the underdog... they have too much money and have too dirty of a trackrecord not to be the top dog in whatever they take intrest in.

I think that it's justified that slashdot flame M$ for this because if we dont, who will?

just take into consideration how you would feel if you were peoplesoft and microsoft was moving in on your buisness... bet you wouldn't feel like the top dog then

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Lindsay Lohan]

What ERP software does Microsoft have

Microsoft Business Solutions CRM is the basket, how many eggs they're putting in it is questionable. Microsoft CRM can automate sales processes in various industry segments, and mobilize sales forces with the hope of improving service--doesn't that qualify as the goals of a full-featured CRM?

Now whether or not they're competitive in the larger markets is an open question. Perhaps with some time/experience they'll get better at it; customers in the CRM field are usually demanding and have a strong hand at shaping features. As they develop new markets in various industries, MS will learn alot.

Oracle has nothing to worry about...

[EnVisiCrypt]

...until Microsoft chooses a more pronounceable name than "Axapta".

Re:Oracle has nothing to worry about...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one of those trick names. The MS salesman calls the CIO:

salesman: We'd like to sell you our ERP software "Axapta" for $10M + $1M/year support. Do you accept?

CIO: Huh? Axapta?

salesman: Great! we have a deal then.

Re:Oracle has nothing to worry about...

[gl4ss]

except.. how are you supposed to spell 'axapta'? "accept"? (vs access..)

Re:Oracle has nothing to worry about...

[sharkey]

That's the kicker! It's just like Serutan: Axapta is "Atpaxa" spelt backwards.

Re:Oracle has nothing to worry about...

[cluelessG]

Actually, Microsoft is planning to write a new software from scratch but it will be based on the best features of Axapta, Navision, Great Plains and Solomon. For now, its only known as "Project Green". Not expected before 2008.

No surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same reason I'm most worried about EA/vivendi's little slurping sprees trying to eat up the gaming industry. Unnatural consolidation in any market helps no one but the largest consolidated players.

In particular, consolidation in an industry helps Microsoft. Only a healthy market can resist takeover by Microsoft, and vice versa.

Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you've just helped him spread his bigoted message. How does it feel to be part of his troll?

Re:Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

You're commenting on a bigoted site, where racist jokes about the French, Chinese, Arabs, and Indians are popular and encouraged. Quit whining.

Open source can make some headway

[gtshafted]

I've been watching the Compiere project for a while: http://www.compiere.org/

I think this project can gain a lot of ground from this Peoplesoft fiasco if it improves its marketing... and doesnt require users to use Oracle as a backend ($1500 is a lot of money for little people). I think there is currently work going on for porting this to postgres though.

Re:Open source can make some headway

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! $1500 probably wouldn't cover the consultants' fees for a day during a Peoplesoft or SAP installation. Oracle licenses are chicken feed when you are talking about ERP software.

Re:Open source can make some headway

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. I wasn't aware of on open source project like that...
but come on! Why does java have to look so ugly??
I would seriously program everything in java if they made the damned UI look decent... oh well.

Re:Open source can make some headway

[rjstanford]

$1500 is a lot of money for little people

People for whom $1500 is a lot of money don't need Peoplesoft. Seriously. Sure, a modern ERP is expensive. Same holds true for specialized manufacturing software, WMS applications, et cetera. But you know what? Its mission critical - more important to a large company than any other software product, and a damn site more critical a choice than an OS platform.

Can you imagine the financial fallout if, say, everyone working for Coca Cola didn't get paid one week? Or if Amazon stopped shipping orders because their systems went down? As an example, Addidas screwed up (or got screwed) on a WMS (Warehouse Management System - just part of a total ERP package) implementation and it damn near put them out of business as a multi-national corporation.

This is the big leagues here. Nobody in their right mind would take even a small productivity gamble to save $1500 on their backend database licenses.

Re:Open source can make some headway

[velo_mike]

($1500 is a lot of money for little people). I think there is currently work going on for porting this to postgres though.

$1500 is a lot for individuals, it's also would cover one consultant-day to cover the implementation - if the consultant came in late, left early and took a long lunch...

Seriously, I've worked everywhere from a 20 man shop up through some of the big software and hardware manufacturer's and $1,500 is noise, an almost trivial amount...

Re:Open source can make some headway

[symbolic]

The Java API supports complete customization of the L&F (look and feel) of any application. You don't have to use the default appearance.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Lindsay Lohan]

Oops, sorry... ERP != CRM.

I like bubbles.

Steep Discounts

[ortcutt]

This is classic Microsoft strategy. Use the monopoly revenues from Windows and Office to dump other products at a loss until they get enough market share that the new products are self-supporting. They probably figure that it's worth a try.

Re:Steep Discounts

[NewOrleansNed]

Peoplesoft isn't the big dog in this market, SAP is. Watching Microsoft build a comparable product to SAP would be like watching a 3 year old attempt to solve a calculus problem. Cute effort, but no way in hell would they succeed. ABAP# anyone?

+5 Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice and subtle. I'm glad to see copy-and-paste trolling back!

What?

[mboverload]

Axapta what?

Re:What?

[Random Web Developer]

Axapta, the ERP system Microsoft bought from Navision.

It's sold in modules (if you need crm you buy it, otherwise you don't, same for the web portal or business intelligence tools etc).

It's extremely customizable because of it's system with X++ (the language) and the AOT/morphX environment. You get easy (object oriented) access to the code of almost everything that's in standard axapta except the kernel (base features, X++ implementation...), but every form or report you see has the X++ code right there for you to look at or modify.

I've seen it compared to great plains here, but I've worked with that and there isn't much similarity. GP is more aimed at financial stuff and is loads more crappy than axapta.

Having said that I can't think what microsoft's plans could be. They are buying a whole lot of Business Solutions (and selling them through their MBS channel) but there is so much overlap and I don't see how they could merge it all into a single good ERP platform.

MBS products:

• Axapta
• MS CRM
• Great Plains
• Navision
• Solomon

All do more or less the same, but are from different acquisitions so are probably hard to merge because of a fundamental design difference

In other news..

[webender]

Microsoft has a product named Axapta.

I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

...applaud our new ERP overlords. The current players in the field are a blight on the entire IT industry. Has anyone EVER seen a large ERP deployment come in anywhere close to budget, schedule or requirements? This whole sector represents the absolute worst of IT consulting: unfulfilled promises, bloated billings, incompetent staff and crap products. As far as I can tell, the big players keep getting these contracts simply because they are the biggest and not because they have ever produced anything worthwhile.

At best, I consider MS to provide a good prototyping environment and an acceptable, if buggy, desktop. That said, even their products would be a great improvement over the state of that particular sector and it seems that only IBM and MS are big enough to convince the PHBs that they are viable alternatives.

Re:I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

*bump* parent up a few

I worked at Bell Atlantic (the old Nynex) prior to the Bell Atlantic + Gte = Verizon nightmare. We had two different version of Peoplesoft, Oracle, and god knows what else running ERP/CRM and a horde of other apps, out of five different locations on the east coast.

Disaster doesn't even being to describe the consulting fees of over 700M USD paid out over the period from 1998 until 2003 (when I quit).

Idiocy? Oh yes, this area is due for some rapid progress!

Re:I for one...

[marcosdumay]

Well, from my experience (not that big) ERP clients aren't that informed. Informed busnesspeople tend to make gradual adjustment on corporations, one step after the other and don't changing what is good. There little someone can do with ERP packages while doing that.

Re:I for one...

[TopShelf]

I would submit that at least in my experience, a major cause of the (budget and time-related) failure of ERP projects is the inability of the users to adequately define their business processes, and stick to the original scope of a project. Typically you get several months in to a large-scale project and suddenly they want to add in functionality rather than waiting to do that as a post-implementation improvement.

The IT side also tends to fail by using modification as a first resort to meeting user needs. When faced with difficult questions on how to support certain processes, instead of finding a solution within the options of the existing system, all too often a mod is introduced as a quick fix. That, of course, leads to further trouble down the road...

Re:I for one...

[NewOrleansNed]

Well, what do you expect? The person on the other end of that phone when you're negotiating contracts is usually a kid who is straight out of college with his brand new waffle stacking degree.

Here's the training:

(1) Spend 2 seconds on each resume
(2) Ask the consultant what they do
(3) Doodle on the resume while they explain how great they are and why NOBODY has their skills (other than the huge stack of resumes you have on your desk)
(4) get their references
(5) turn the references checks into sales calls
.
.
.
PROFIT!!!

I once had a consultant who I had a great working relationship with who I recruited to go work for a major chemical company based out of St. Louis. He's expensive, but the client said that the job was to do a fit/gap so that they could implement SAP Treasury. He said he could do it, he had a gap in his schedule, so he took it. The client said they had a limited budget, but we were able to work it out to 4 weeks. $250 an hour.

Consultant gets out there, gets familiarized with the system, and then they tell him that they want him to spend the rest of his time to train an intern, who has NEVER touched an SAP system, to implement Treasury during his last 3 weeks there.

The consultant refused, the client badgered him, and he refused to go further on a project that was destined to fail. Couldn't blame him. I lost $1800 bucks on the deal, though. Bastid! :)

Re:I for one...

[ahdeoz]

While true, that doesn't explain why after a couple years, the ERP "solution" still doesn't work as good as their cobbled together business processing that involves web forms, faxes, COBOL batch jobs, spreadsheets, email, dumb terminals, and filing cabinets.

PeopleSoft

[Mark_MF-WN]

Anything is better than PeopleSoft. My school rolled out a system developed by PeopleSoft to handle course registration and enrollment, and it's undoubtedly the WORST piece of shit I've every used -- and I've used Microsoft Works!

I hope PeopleSoft is wiped from the earth. I'd take Microsoft's unpleasant, buggy software over PeopleSoft's completely unusable atrocities any day.

Re:PeopleSoft

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely, it's the system that your school took, customized, and fucked up in the process. While, PeopleSoft has it's problems, I wouldn't classify it as bad as MSFT software.

Re:PeopleSoft

[melikamp]

Would that be sjsu? Because your description sounds very familiar.

Re:PeopleSoft

[Tomfrh]

I didn't like it either. I used it for a while whilst working at a university. It handled all the student details/grades etc.

It had stacks of dead menu items and broken features. They appeared like any other button or item, except they were inactive or did the wrong thing.

The icons were cryptic too. The main icon looked like a dog or a plane depending on how you perceived it. It was in fact a dog. Why a dog you ask? Because it 'fetched' things for you.

Re:PeopleSoft

[Mark_MF-WN]

No, this would be GoSFU. It sounds like a number of universities have inflicted PeopleSoft atrocities on their students.

Re:PeopleSoft

[Mark_MF-WN]

My University had no part in creating this beast. They don't even handle the tech support. I know, because I had to deal with them a number of times about the fact that the system wouldn't work with any browser except Internet Explorer (and it didn't even work particularly well for IE).

Compare that to Microsoft, whose products often work fine in Wine, whose website is completely Gecko and KHTML compatible, and whose products actually WORK (albeit badly).

Microsoft's software actually possesses virtues -- like reasonably well-written help files and great ergonomics. PeopleSoft's software has NO virtues. It is absolute crap, shit of the worst kind.

Re:PeopleSoft

[Anonymous Coward]

and it's undoubtedly the WORST piece of shit I've every used -- and I've used Microsoft Works!

I've used worse. Try Fortune 500 company migrating all their HR intranet to a well undersized Windows NT server complete with college-noob payroll reporting system. I think it was called "Databasics." It must have had a single-digit uptime. At least it felt like it.

Re:PeopleSoft

[theAtomicFireball]

You obviously haven't used Oracle's HR apps.

The bad thing about this marketplace is that unlike commercial, boxed software, where the product is used exactly as it leaves the testing floor, ERP software (not just PeopleSoft) gets manhandled by a whole fleet of "implementation consultants" who are almost always overpaid, and, unfortunately, are often unqualified - sometimes obscenely so.

The impression most people have of their ERP vendor is a direct reflection on the quality of the implementors. In the days when PeopleSoft was typically implemented by a small group of select consultants and Dave would send one of the guys who wrote the system out to help fix and get back on track any floundering implementation, customers were loyal -- almost at an Apple / Harley Davidson level -- and their software wasn't really any better back then (although it was much simpler, and people's expectations were lower).

Re:PeopleSoft

[ScentCone]

As someone in that line of work, I can tell you that you're right: there are a lot of really incapable people. I can also tell you that the really good ones are out there, and they're VERY expensive to keep around. That's what drives the high rates. Of course, the crappy consultancies match those "going" rates, and you can end up with amateurs at too-high rates. You've got to talk to your reseller's references, and really get the scoop. It's worth it - the good guys become very clear, and it's a short list.

Re:PeopleSoft

[theAtomicFireball]

There's some truth to what you say... unfortunately, a lot of the people who ultimately make the decision about what ERP package to implement or who they're going to hire to do the implementation work are borderline tech-illiterate. A competent decision maker can, with a little effort, weed out the good ones from the bad, but most of the time, they just buy into marketing hype from one of the big consulting firms and abdicate most say in the individuals actually picked to do the work.

It's also a catch-22 - typically, most of the good people have little or no downtime, so many of the people on the bench at any given time are less-than-stellar... but you can bet that the partner or sales manager is painting a very nice picture of those peoples' abilities to the client in order to get them off the bench.

Re:PeopleSoft

[ScentCone]

Yup. Of course, this is true of HVAC companies, masonry companies, and nanny agencies, too! Good people are scarce, and the laws of supply and demand drive up the prices. At a really good firm, there are no bad consultants, and even though the hourly rates are high, they'll deliver a finished (and working) body of work for a more reasonable price. There really aren't very many shops like this - it's amazing, actually. That will change some as the economy warms back up, which I'm seeing even now.

Re:PeopleSoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont blame the tools - blame the tradesman
Peoplesoft IS OK... Ive implemented in a number of business over the years - always on time and on budget... and the users have loved it....

The only project that didnt succeed, I left before the end detailing why it would fail etc... and how to fix it.. and they followed my instructions and then fixed it !

Re:PeopleSoft

[SunFan]

Or maybe it was a developer's joke, meaning it's a dog of a system?

Re:PeopleSoft

[kisielk]

I just love having to wait an hour at the registrar's for them to bring up my unofficial transcript because the system is "having problems"..

Re:PeopleSoft

[Qbertino]

and it's undoubtedly the WORST piece of shit I've every used -- and I've used Microsoft Works!

Actually I thought MS Works was quite fine. But then again, that was Works 5 on DOS 5.0 back in '94.

Re:PeopleSoft

[Anonymous Coward]

University of Louisville, KY ???

Re:PeopleSoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Cornell?

Wait, that isn't until October...

Re:PeopleSoft

[ahdeoz]

He wasn't describing the school, he was describing PeopleSoft. And Works isn't that bad. Until Office 97 it was better than excel.

I MS is the Borg...

[Uber Banker]

...the RIAA are the Ferengi

Re:I MS is the Borg...

[jasontheking]

and the US are the Romulans

Re:I MS is the Borg...

[Anonymous Coward]

and the United Nations can be the Klingon High Council before General Martok

(corruption galore)

Discussed at Microsoft executive meeting....

[lateralus_1024]

Vote on post-buyout name change:
Option 1: MicroSoft
Option 2: MicroPeople

Option 1 confirmed.

Re:Discussed at Microsoft executive meeting....

[java.bean]

People! Microsoft is not buying Peoplesoft. Oracle bought Peoplesoft already. Microsoft is talking about stealing Peoplesoft customers who would otherwise be under support contracts with Oracle.

Re:Discussed at Microsoft executive meeting....

[melikamp]

The following options will be given consideration:
PeopleX
People XP
People#
Visual People
VisualSoft
MS Soft

However, given their complete lack of imagination (Word, Office, Notepad, Windows, Money, etc.) the product will ultimately become known as Microsoft Management (c), and, needless to say, everyone will have to adapt to it when the next version of Windows comes.

Re:As a user of both Microsoft & Peoplesoft pr

[northcat]

Dude!

Re:This news

[nuckin futs]

just thank god it's not a duplicate post.

Just what I was thinking

[SuperKendall]

"Axapta" sounds like something Bill the Cat would say. Who knows, perhaps Bill ended up as VP of ERP.

Re:Computerworld slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Original poster here--I certainly didn't bold those letters. Slashcode must have inserted that comment, yes sir. Stupid buggy Slashdot.

Re:As a user of both Microsoft & Peoplesoft pr

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Is that anything like the /. 503 errors?

Lawson Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're from Lawson, realize that you're fucked.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Anonymous Coward]

the only ones that they would have a chance picking up would be the smaller customers that are already running on windows. from what I've seen PeopleSoft is geared towards Oracle on big hardware. Sure it can run on Informix, DB2, etc, but Oracle is where it shines....probably one of the reasons they were bought.

Does not compute!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, wait, lemme get this straight... they don't want an uncertain future, so they're fleeing to... Microsoft?

Well, I suppose knowing you'll be mercilessly gouged, locked in, and forced to upgrade at the whim of the vendor, is better than not knowing what the future holds.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

With Microsoft's What?

[Master of Transhuman]

"starts being more competitive with its Axapta product"

Ah, never heard of it...

Guess that answers that question...

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I have been working with Axapta for the last six months, I can tell you that they have a really good product. While it (Axapta) is not well known here, the product has a ton of installations in Europe. The US has only enterprise wide solutions like SAP, JDEdwards, Peoplesoft. But it has nothing for the middleman. There was an article a few months back about M$ going after the midmarket segment. They acquired this product with Navision from Daamgard. And last but not least the language is not VB its called X++. Basically its Java. I hope that clears it up. I got tired of hearing people troll about something they know nothing about. As for the existing Peoplesoft customers, Larry and his boys are going to tear a new whole in their wallets.

Re:Obligatory...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can hear the smell of a thousand handjobs being performed on adolescent squirrel-ticks.

Kuali Project

[flacco]

two universities are working on an "open-ish" source alternative to PeopleSoft:

http://www.kualiproject.org/

if a university's going to move off of peoplesoft, and they can stick it out, this might be a safer move than signing in blood with MS.

Fear not

[Anonymous Coward]

MS has no *none* *zip* *zilch* *nada* credibility in the enterprise space. Even SQL Server 2K is thought of as a souped up workgroup product.

Plus, they've made virtually no investment in this sector.

You'd have to be desperate or stupid or possibly both to run to MS.

no jimmy, its not

[Anonymous Coward]

"the iPod is simply unbeatable"

Oh brother. I own two of the blasted little gadgets, but I consider the UI on the ipod mediocre. Not horrible, but enough oddities that makes you think they said "Okay we'll spend $X on the UI, not a penny more for any reason, even if it kills us"

I can only hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can only hope that Microsoft has bought out Peoplesoft.

About 2 years ago my university switched to Peoplesoft's god awful software for registration.

This piece of crap randomly refreshes, has no logical layout, and is piss slow. So in short, fuck Peoplesoft, I was rooting for Oracle to buy and gut you.

Re:I can only hope...

[java.bean]

Tune in here on Tuesday my friend: http://www.oracle.com/peoplesoft/launch_18jan05.ht ml

That's exactly what's going to happen.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[SunFan]

Huh? The words "Enterprise", "Resource", and "Planning" appear all over in Microsoft's marketing materials. It's just some mix and match, and, like magic, we got ERP!

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Plugh]

Fleeing the oppressive Oracle to attain the safety of Microsoft seems to me like fleeing oppressive California for the safety of Stalinist Russia.

Re: You MUST be clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

... or in high school not to appreciate MS's enterprise experience.

OT: Re:the difference, don't buy FUD.

[ckaminski]

If the whole Warp crusade looked more like a sleek Ferrari than a twisted hippy anti-war rally, OS/2 might command a large share of the desktop today.

As a PeopleSoft customer...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I, for one, welcome our new laser-eye-zapping Microsoft overlords!

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions/Navisio n/default.aspx

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if I remember correctly - PeopleSoft installations can take upwards of 3 YEARS. It is probably one of the worst installations to ever be involved with.

Re: You MUST be clueless

[theAtomicFireball]

the original poster wasn't failing to appreciate MS's enterprise experience, they were noting that Microsoft has little credibility in the Enterprise Applications space - and Enterprise Applications are not just applications run in an Enterprise.

MicroSoft has very little credibility in this space and almost no presence among the larger ERP implementations. You are just as clueless or misinformed as you accuse the original poster of being.

Although I'm no fan of SQL Server, I have to disagree with the original poster's statement in one regard, however. SQL2k has been gaining credibility rapidly in the Enterprise Application space (including as a back-end for PeopleSoft). It's gained considerable ground on Oracle in certain portions of the marketspace, although it's nowhere near overtaking them.

What it really means:

[Spy der Mann]

It means more people vulnerable to furure viruses and the like due to a closed-source Microsoft product. Frankly, I wouldn't touch that with a 20-foot pole.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[tundog]

I used to work at SAP. To put this in perspective, Microsoft currently has about 2% market share in the entire ERP market and 0 customers in the fortune 500. The only place they have any traction is the small business segment which is an area that the big players have typically overlooked because the customers just can't afford the costs associated with EXTREAMLY complex, HIGHLY customized software.

You'd think that since small business are small, their requirements for ERP software wouldn't be that difficult. It actually turns out that their business processes are just as complex as the big guys - the only difference is that they can't afford the army of consultants required to get the software to fit their busniess needs. QED.

Could be worse...

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they're not eying our sisters then I guess it's alright. Am I right guys or what?!

wrong impression

[Scudsucker]

That was just a sob story by Be. Apple had been giving them some support, presumably because they were considering buying Be before they purchased Next instead. Why spend money supporting another company's product when it doesn't provide you any benefit?

Notice the lack of hand-holding didn't stop Linux and BSD coders from developing for the Macs of the time. Also note that some of the cloners were offering to put Be on their machines (Power Computing, IIRC).

We use Axapta where I work.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I have to honestly say it is one of the smelliest turds of a piece of software that I have ever had the displeasure to be saddled with.

Here's a quick example: you open a list of 1000 items that are displayed in a grid. You want to see the 500th item. You'd think that you just grab the scroll bar and scroll down to the middle, right? WRONG!!! That will take you to about record 20. If you want to go the the 500th item, you'll have to hit PgDn about 100 times. And each time you hit PgDn, you'll have to wait about half a second for the grid to redraw. If you have your doctorate in mathematics you might be able to figure that you're looking at about a minute to just to scroll down a short list of items. Seriously. And it's all like that. I don't know how people write software that badly.

I've never used Peoplesoft, but I cannot imagine that it is even conceivable that it could be any worse than Axapta.

Re:We use Axapta where I work.

[BlueMonk]

I program for an international ERP software company, and one thing I notice in addressing such challenges is that the desire to centralize the data and yet provide remote access is the counterbalance to high performance. In MS Access, a long scrolling list of items would not be such a problem when you're working with a local database. But since the data needs to be centralized, and access to the system needs to be remote, ERP systems have to be designed in a way that can allow remote users to deal with a managably small amount of data at a time. Often times the lists you deal with in an ERP system are so large that it's not practical (for the user) to view the entire list anyway (even if performance is optimal), so a user will often times type in a part of a name to narrow down the list to the items they are interested in. But depending on where you strike a balance, performance results may vary greatly for long lists.

Not to defend Axapta (I haven't used it myself); it's just a relevant observation I have about designing ERP software. With enough time and effort, I would think one could do better in getting the best of both worlds (performance and remote access), but it does have to be intentional.

Re:We use Axapta where I work.

[austinnichols101]

Yes - the Axapta scrollbars do not show the relative position within the grid - they're relative to the number of pages/records that have been fetched into the thin client. I've often wished that Axapta could pre-determine how many records are in the table as a total and then set up the scroll bar so that it works in a more 'familiar' way. However, it's important to understand that you're dealing with a 3-tier client and the client is only fetching the records as you ask for them.

OTOH, I would think that it makes more sense to use the excellent search functionality to go to the record(s) you want - Axapta let's you do wildcard searches on almost every field in every database.

Re:We use Axapta where I work.

[ahdeoz]

10,000 records of name, address, phone number, ssn, email, and foo come to about 1MB. It can be downloaded in about 1 second over a browser and searched in javascript in about 10 seconds. With 100 operators working simultaneously you'll get about 1 dirty read out of 10. Big whoop, a 10 second wait and re-entry for ERP. Sounds like heaven.

Re:We use Axapta where I work.

[BlueMonk]

Like I said, with more effort, the results could probably be improved, but due to the way software is designed, it's not always as easy as it sounds to reach theoretical limits (10,000 records in 1 second) when taking into account other design considerations. Also, 10,000 records cannot be downloaded in 1 second when your remote system is using a modem, which many people still do from remote locations.

Re: You MUST be clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I've got more experience in my left nut than you've got. Period. MS has no credibility in the enterprise space.

None.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Scudsucker]

speaking as somebody who had to administer said package for several years in the early 21st century

So, did you manage to get the heck out of Fargo, or did you have to go find work at SEI?

They are a monopoly.

[bluGill]

Google does have a monopoly on web searches, and Apple has a monopoly on HD based music players. There is nothing illegal or immoral about it. However if you have a monopoly it is illegal and immoral to do some things that would otherwise be normal competition.

Thus Apple perhaps should be forced to open up their iTunes music format to anyone. (though this is dependant on keeping the monopoly, since HD based music players are easy to make it is questionable if they can keep it in the long run)

I can't think of anything google is doing right now that a monopolist is not allowed, but they do need to be careful because when I discover that I will be against google.

Re: You MUST be clueless

[SunFan]

MS has no credibility in the enterprise space.

None.

And they earned it, too.

I've got it!

[Infonaut]

Alpaca.

I can see the marketroids now: "Alpaca is fast and lean, able to scale to new heights, and it's warm and fuzzy, just like all Microsoft products. Alpaca: It's no goat!"

Uh-huh...

[SeaFox]

Microsoft has announced an intent to pick up some of the PeopleSoft customers currently fleeing from possible support contract increases and an uncertain future

Because the future is always certian when it comes to Microsoft software products!

If they were that foolish to buy PSFT

[Stone316]

in the first place then they'd be foolish enough to switch to an MS product..

Wait now, we use use PSFT in house! Doh!

In all seriousness, i'm not that impressed with peoplesoft... We use the HR, Helpdesk and eRecruit packages... I've been the prime DBA for the latter two. You can say what you want about Oracle products being complex, unwieldy but it provides tremendous flexibility. If you know what your doing there's a ton of stats and debugging info available to you. Psft on the other hand is an absolutely nightmare to tune.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[afidel]

No freaking kidding. I work for a mid size (18 employee) consulting firm. We are looking for something to replace MS CRM for ticket tracking and Time Slips for time management. We'd love to have an enter it once get the info out as many ways as possible system, it just doesn't exist. We want to be able to create a ticket, enter notes and expenses, and be able to generate bills, customer satisfaction surveys, and knowledge base entries. There isn't anything even remotly like that out there, and the time and expense to build it just isn't justified for this sized firm. I'm sure we aren't the only service firm our size that would like something like this but no one seems to even be looking at it as a potential market. I mean you have something nice on the financial side with Quickbooks, why isn't there something that's a step up for when you need to do Customer Relationship Management?

Irony

[tofu2go]

wasn't one of the arguments that Oracle used in their trial for the merger with Peoplesoft was because of competition... how Microsoft had plans or intentions on entering the market, and was thus a threat? and how it was revealed that they had, at one point, plans to buy SAP, which did not pan out? how ironic if Microsoft were to do just that, entering the market, thus giving validity to Oracle's conjectures. please excuse me if there are inaccuracies in my statements, i'm working from memory, and my memory may not be serving me well.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you work for a consulting firm why not build it and then sell it + the installation, training, maintenance and customization to other clients? Even better why not write said software in your spare time or quit and do it on your own?

Let Microsoft play for tablescraps

[Perdo]

The biggest player in the market is not Oracle, its pawn Peoplesoft or Microsoft.

The biggest player is SAP, and they will be extracting their due.

You need urgently an injection of iorn.

[jotaeleemeese]

That will increase you ironic levels.

Nonsense.

[jotaeleemeese]

Once you go over 20 employees in a company the processes and procedures to be followed are as complex as a company woth 5000 employees, what changes is the liability the company incours if they screw up.

Re:Nonsense.

[rjstanford]

Once you go over 20 employees in a company the processes and procedures to be followed are as complex as a company woth 5000 employees, what changes is the liability the company incours if they screw up.

Not really. In a company of 20 people (and I know something about this, being a principal of a small company myself), everybody knows everybody else. You can do payroll by filling out a web form on ADP.com in 15 minutes. Employee files all fit inside a single file cabinet drawer, and you probably only have 1-2 offices and very little staff overlap. With 5,000 people things get a lot more complicated.

Iron.

[jotaeleemeese]

Iron.
Iron.
Iron.

m$

[chrisranjana.com]

m$ is fast spreading it's tentacles everywhere !

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Navision from Daamgard"

it's Damgaard, not Daamgard

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[chthon]

It seems to me that as a consulting firm, you must be able to generate more money than e.g. a transport company.

I worked in a transport company with 20 people, and I did the IT, which was based upon a minicomputer with a relational database and a rapid application development, with programming in COBOL.

It seems they started out with a custom built solution, done by an external company, and delivered completely with sources, so that the local IT responsible could update and add applications.

It seems that as a consulting company with the necessary knowledge of the requirements, you should be able to hire one or two persons, help them with the requirements and the design, and then pass the rest of the work to one person doing updates and adding functionality.

The biggest problem is not programming, it is domain knowledge transfer from you to the person doing the programming and the maintenance.

What did Peoplesoft lack?

[Ride-My-Rocket]

All of our mission critical data is in Oracle and the not-to-important-data is in SQL Server or a few MySQL databases. We were actually leaning toward Oracle's product (because we use it as our critical DB), however they didn't have a few _very_ important functionalities that we need for our HR processes, so that left PeopleSoft and SAP.

What important features did you find Oracle to be lacking, that SQL Server/mySQL had? My employer is significantly smaller (300 employees worldwide), but we gross $50+ million a year and we're just starting the ERP evaluation process, upgrading from an 80s package using a version of Oracle so old, it's not even relational. As such, any info I learn about ERP and can pass along to my boss is muy helpful.

Re:What did Peoplesoft lack?

[AstroDrabb]

We didn't find Oracle to be lacking. Re-read what I wrote. Basically we only want to use Oracle for our mission critical data. For small projects and web applications we use MS SQL Server or MySQL.

The enterprise version of Oracle is expensive so we use other DB's for less important data. I don't make the purchasing choices. I personally don't know why we only use the Enterprise version Oracle. Oracle offers a standard version that, last time I checked, was a little less then MS' standard version of SQL Server.

For a smaller company like where you work, I think the Open Source Compiere would be perfect. Compiere is ERP & CRM for the small-medium Enterprise and works with Oracle. Since it is Open Source, there are no costs involved with Compiere itself. So you can try it out and see if it will meet your needs. Take a few weeks to play with it. ERP/CRM can be very complex software and can take a long time to set up/learn. Our PeopleSoft HR/Portal system was a good years worth of work.

Re:HEY SETH, I TOUCHED YOUR MOMMY'S HOO-HOO!

[Anonymous Coward]

You WILL retract that statement, or I WILL sue you.

Wasn't about Microsoft's entry to cybertech?!

[Bemmu]

Microsoft Eyes; What do you want to see today?

Re:It's because... You went from:

[Your Average Joe]

The Frying pan into the FIRE! YIKES!

Project Green

[cluelessG]

MBS said they will write a completely new softare based on the best features of their current products. They even pulled many programmers from Axapta and Navision teams to start working on the new software. But they returned back to their former projects in a few months' time. According to MBS the new products is expected around 2008 and it is curently known as Project Green.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[JDonahoe]

Fleeing the oppressive Oracle to attain the safety of Microsoft seems to me like fleeing oppressive California for the safety of Stalinist Russia.

I don't think it is the more open support of Oracle they're trading for Microsoft's. I think it is the higher cost of support. A more appropriate metaphor would be that they are fleeing the high property values of oppressive California by heading to the low property values of Stalin's Siberia.

I could be wrong--I didn't RTFA.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[tundog]

The biggest problem is not programming, it is domain knowledge transfer from you to the person doing the programming and the maintenance.


You hit the nail right on the head. This is why there is such a huge trend to use standard software. Custom code just leads to headaches, even when done in house and is why so many people have headaches when they upgrade their ERP systems.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[canfirman]

Interesting. I've worked with the PeopleSoft application for 6 years now, and I've been on installs that take 4 months to 1 and 1/2 years. I find PeopleSoft's GUI to be much better than any other I've seen.

microsoft eyeing peoplesoft customers

[phats garage]

Sort of like a wolf eyes sheep, it'd scare the heck outta me!

So they lied under oath again...

[NullProg]

Microsoft is expected to support the DOJ's position that Microsoft doesn't compete in the high-end ERP market that is dominated by the three largest rivals, Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP AG.

Microsoft held firm in its testimony that it has no plans to move its current enterprise application software products into Oracle's large enterprise space, despite Oracle's defense attorney holding up a number of Microsoft documents which outline the high-functioning product migrating into that market.

Oracle PeopleSoft Trial
Oracle Pre-empts Microsoft Testimony

Enjoy,

Whale and a pirana

[canuck57]

Microsoft has announced an intent to pick up some of the PeopleSoft customers currently fleeing from possible support contract increases and an uncertain future.

This is like a big whale (Oracle) is about to get bitten by a pirana (Microsoft) and the customers will have to pay, and pay and pay.

Now if the companies invested in open source or their own source code built on an open POSIX based system then these vendors would not be able to do this. If you had the source you don't have to worry about a vendor going in a direction you don't like.

If you do buy commercial closed source products, get a source code escrow in the contract where if they decide not to support it or get bought out you get a copy of the source. This way they are sub-par to open source. If you can't get this escrow - know the risk going in.

Besides, how hard would it be to write a HRS system anyway? A recipe of OpenLDAP, MySQL, PHP, C and Java....

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[plopez]

When did not knowing anything about a problem domain ever stop any company from shipping software? I just pity the early adopter's though...

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[hhlost]

One presumes MS know what they're doing, but this is certainly a weird gambit.

Have you lost your mind?

Straight from the horses mouth

[Acer500]

Heres a link to Microsofts announcement:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/jan0 5/01-10MBSMigrationPR.asp

Missing the point

[yukio2000]

I think most people here are missing the point. The ERP market is consolidating. The features and functionality for HR, AR, AP, etc...are all similiar. Microsoft is offering a lower cost alternative to business' that have already invested in the Microsoft business solution. If they can get customers to defect from Oracle, they gain market share with SQL Server. And for anyone who has worked with Axapta and says that it's the worst software ever, check out Oracle apps. They are, without question, the biggest piece of crap ever developed. You don't like the grid functionality of Axapta? How do you think these packages work? They compile SQL code open connections to a database, return recordsets, close the connection, flush the cache, and then do it all over again. This is not unique to Axapta. Axapta actually returns recrodsets faster than PeopleSoft becasue it compiles SQL natively for SQL Server...there's no figuring out what kind of database the SQL needs to be issued to the db as....with ORacle, you're jsut lucky if you can get the goddamn applications to run for five minutes before they crap out. Maybe that JDBC fetch is just too much for the Oracle DB?

Re: You MUST be clueless

[yukio2000]

you're kidding me? Mac OS X is going to take over windows? oh man..that's good stuff...LOL...I bet everyone at Redmond is terrified of OS X.... Solaris...LOL...LOL...LOL..Sun will be lucky to survive as a company in the coming year. McNeally has run that business with some monkeys, an abacus, and a dart board.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[afidel]

Because I'm not a programmer, I'm a systems engineer who designs and fixes complex networking systems. I have taken quite a few programming classes but I'm really not that good at it and I don't enjoy doing it as a profession (hacking around is different). That and none of our customers are professional services people so we would have no customer base to sell such a solution to.

Re: You MUST be clueless

[SunFan]

Desktop and server, Apple and Sun have given Microsoft a solid challenge for the next several years. Tie in Linux, and Microsoft is really looking isolated. They are the only one who isn't UNIX. They are the only one not competing on merit. They are the only one who really have only one product worth anything, and that is Office. All the other products are fads or can be done as well elsewhere more inexpensively. I thought I would never have said this, but the modern UNIX/Linux destop is as good as Windows is, right now. The only thing propping up Microsoft is Office lock-in, their WMA lock-in. How long is that going to last as more customers get pissed off over their incompetence towards security?

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Siva]

PeopleSoft ERP stuff (and I suspect this is true of SAP and Oracle, too) is exceedingly complicated. The only way to truely comprehend the complexity of it all is to work with it on the technical side. After a year of working with it, you will look back on that year and realize that all the knowledge you've obtained comprises only a small fraction of the everything there is to know about the system. Part of the complexity is simply due to the wide variety of business practices that exist throughout the world. Another contributing factor is the constant updating that must be done to ensure that the software keeps up with the equally complex and ever-changing legal requirements for businesses. On top of that, these are commercial software companies, and just like others, they constantly redesign their products to stay ahead of the competition.

And yet here I am about to take a permanant position in this field after 3 1/2 years as an intern and consultant. What the hell am I thinking? :)

Your school too?

[Senjutsu]

I like the way the course registration system actually has to take nights and Sundays off, because the POS software can't do backups and/or data integrity verification while online.

The user interface is a combination of random bullshit with absolutely no rhyme nor reason underlying anything. The comp. sci. department regards it with utter contempt and uses it as an example in the software design courses of what not to do when designing a system.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[ahdeoz]

CRM and ERP is a very weak field, populated by incompetent companies with long track records. Basically, they rewrite it from scratch through consulting for every company. SAP, Siebel, PeopleSoft, etc., are made for the consultants, not the clients. And if Microsoft could get the clients, they could get the consulting. And I'd find it hard to believe that Microsoft would do a worse job than, say, Peoplesoft at developing custom apps for businesses.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[ahdeoz]

PeopleSoft ERP is an exceedingly complicated application because it is poorly designed and cobbled together from thousands of different custom installs. But ERP is not a really complex task. Business practices are varied. Trying to fit them all into one package with years of cruft is what's complex.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[davegaramond]

What's wrong with Money? I always thought it's pretty decent for non-computer folks to use. And it's now the market leader?

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[DK_SplatMan]

They have two quite good products, which they purchased in Denmark, Scandinavia. The products are "Conorde Axapta", and Navision Attain. They were formely owned by the company "Navision Damgaard" which Microsoft purchased about two years ago. Both products are mature and technologically reasonable goods products. They hold a market share of approx 70% of the total market in northern europe for such software. I am not a fan of those products, but they actually contain long feature-lists and have many satisfied customers. Navision Attain can not be considered an ERP platform - its more a "book keeping" application. Concorde Axapta contains features and functionality that compares with many other ERP systems, including SAP, Baan, and others.

Once again...

[Ben Jao Ming]

Microsoft starts being more competitive with its Axapta product?"

The giant bought a company instead of inventing its own product. I guess most software innovator's big dream is something like "when I grow up I'm gonna be bought out by Microsoft".

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

[Siva]

True, I should have added that in as well. I mean, hell, the modules on our system that have been around for a while still use COBOL extensively. Fortunately, the newer modules do not. I think I've heard the upcoming version of Financials moves further away from it as well. Now if only they'd find something better than SQR...

what it means is...

[MMHere]

...more server crashes ...more late paycheck deliveries ...more accounting mistakes.

Microsoft compete with PeopleSoft? Fat Chance!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been working on Axapta, MS's bought-in answer to the ERP market, and i can honestly say that it will be a long while before PeopleSoft has anything to worry about.. except when it comes to it's smallest customers.

We were sold on the idea that Axapta could easily handle our volumes of about 25000 invoices per day, and still accomodate growth, and that it was heavily customizable and users would be able to create their own reports..

Fat chance, the system is such a shoddily designed piece of rubbish that it crawls with our volumes, and we can't afford to let users create and run their own reports because the simplest ones bring the system to it's knees! As for the extensibility of the system, the in-built X++ language is like something that some varsity first-year came up with for a compilers project. It's a joke.

Just my 2c.

Re:Microsoft? ERP?

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Re:Computerworld slashdotted?

[ginotech]

wee modded down for anti-hate-hate! thank you mods!