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NEW YORK—At its PeopleSoft Analyst Day here, PeopleSoft Inc. outlined its plans for integrating its enterprise software with that of the newly purchased J.D. Edwards & Co.
The company plans to maintain three product lines: PeopleSoft Enterprise, PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne and PeopleSoft World.
The two lead products going forward are PeopleSoft Enterprise, or PeopleSoft classic software for the enterprise customer, and PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne, which has a JDE core and is slated for the midmarket. PeopleSoft World will serve JDEs existing user base tied to the AS/400 platform.
Company size and industry will be the determining factors regarding which products customers should go with, according to PeopleSoft executives.
“We had some degree of concern how this was going to be perceived, but we wound up at this product strategy through our customers,” said Craig Conway, president and CEO of PeopleSoft. “Were not feeling any speed bumps as we match the best products by industry to the customer.”
As a result of the integration of the two companies, PeopleSoft will roll out several new or enhanced applications, including three in the next quarter—Corporate Real Estate Management, Supplier Relationship Management, and Plant Manufacturing & Advanced Planning. In the first quarter of 2004, the company will roll out Asset Management.
Moving forward, PeopleSoft, of Pleasanton, Calif., also plans to support both its middleware relationship with BEA Systems Inc. and JDEs ensconced middleware relationship with IBM.
“PeopleSoft has always supported more than one vendor,” said Ram Gupta, executive vice president of products and technology. “JDE has supported IBM as one tier. Going forward, we are all about bringing choice to the customer. Not only will we support IBM for EnterpriseOne, but we will extend support [with other vendors].”
In terms of any architectural transformations over time, PeopleSoft contends that it will continue to maintain two product lines—its traditional one and the one brought to the company in the $1.8 billion J.D. Edwards acquisition.
“We have two product lines today—with different tool sets—and thats very sustainable,” Gupta said. “The key thing is theyre both built on the same architecture and key things can be done. … We have no need to change the architecture or tool of either one of the application sets.”
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Page Two
Separately, PeopleSoft, which continues to ward off a $7.3 billion hostile takeover bid from rival Oracle Corp., announced that its acquisition of J.D. Edwards would produce greater cost savings than it had originally projected as the combined company jettisons jobs and office space. The company expects to cut between 750 and 1,000 jobs in 2004, which is expected to save PeopleSoft between $10 million and $15 million.
Though it previously stated savings of about $150 million to $250 million from the merger with J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft said on Thursday it expects to save between $167 million and $207 million over the next year. That will leave the company about 12,000 employees. Officials made a point of saying that there will be virtually no cuts of developers, sales representatives and consultants.
With the merger progressing so well, PeopleSoft said it would have higher than anticipated 2003 revenues with the final total coming in at a projected $2.145 billion to $2.175 billion. Sales for 2004 were pegged at between $2.8 billion and $2.9 billion. The company also predicts it will garner 36 percent of its revenue from new customers.
PeopleSoft also announced that its board of directors approved a $350 million buyback of its common stock. That should leave PeopleSoft with $1 billion in cash after the stock buyback is completed at the end of the year.
In related news, Oracle late Thursday announced that it had extended its offer for PeopleSoft stock to Oct. 17. It had been due to expire Sept. 19.
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