ANAHEIM, Calif.—PeopleSoft Inc. executives detailed some forthcoming technology integrations from the companys acquisition of J.D. Edwards & Co. as well as some usability and applications management improvements slated as part of PeopleSofts Total Ownership Experience (TOE) initiative at the companys Connect customer conference here Tuesday.
Ram Gupta, PeopleSofts executive vice president for products and technology, outlined the first integration points for PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards technologies. Within the next 90 days, PeopleSoft plans to integrate J.D. Edwards real estate management applications into its own application suite, now branded PeopleSoft Enterprise.
The J.D. Edwards applications, branded EnterpriseOne, get PeopleSofts supplier relationship management technology. Asset management technologies from J.D. Edwards will also cross over to PeopleSoft Enterprise by the first quarter of next year, Gupta said.
“PeopleSoft had been trying to get into real estate and asset management, and J.D. Edwards had been trying to get into supplier relationship management,” Gupta said. “Now well have the best of both worlds. Well leverage our combined assets to build dramatically superior products native in each architecture.”
Gupta also promised support for new technologies in J.D. Edwards applications including BEA WebLogic application server, Microsoft SQL Server database and Linux.
Gupta said in addition to transferring intellectual property and adding new platform support, PeopleSoft would continue to develop and enhance both product lines.
“Our strategy is not the consolidation of platforms,” he said. “Were going to keep, improve and expand both portfolios.”
Though Gupta did not mention it during his keynote, other PeopleSoft executives indicated at the conference a somewhat less ambitious course for the IBM e-Series (AS/400)-based PeopleSoft World applications acquired from J.D. Edwards. While those applications will be supported, no new developments are planned beyond bug fixes, officials said, as they expect most customers to migrate to other PeopleSoft applications.
Gupta also introduced new application management tools related to the companys TOE initiative including Setup Manager, a tool for managing installation and configuration of PeopleSofts software, and Performance Monitor, a tool for automating the process of software fixes and updates and identifying, diagnosing and fixing performance issues in the software.
He also demonstrated task-based navigation, PeopleSofts suite-wide user interface improvement.
“It takes you directly to the task you want to do and reduces the number of steps it takes to complete tasks,” Gupta said.
PeopleSoft CTO Rick Bergquist followed Gupta to the stage and announced a new tool called Process Modeler, which will combine existing business process modeling capabilities that PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards had developed.
“We came up with something better than each of us had developed on our own,” Bergquist said. The new tool will be available in the fourth quarter.
Lastly, Bergquist demonstrated a new portal tool currently known as Project Beethoven. The portal shows what PeopleSoft modules a customer has licensed and installed and offers links to product training and PeopleSoft contacts. The latter links are IM and presence-enabled to show whether contacts are available to chat.
“These are the things were working on to make your jobs more effective,” Bergquist said.
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