Recently, I met with Marc Weintraub from Oracle to discuss some ideas that may not be crystal clear to PeopleSoft customers or the public at large. At the top of our list was, “What did Oracle mean when it said, ‘Oracle is fully committed to supporting and investing in its PeopleSoft solutions indefinitely’?”1 That’s a long time—“indefinitely.”
To share a comparison, one of my responsibilities when I worked in the telco industry during the early years of my career was to maintain a permanent record of all assets. I thought, “Permanent, really? That’s a long time.” What I found out was that some of those records were actually close to 100 years old and contained information that was still being used.
That timeframe made good business sense for the telco industry, but what does “indefinitely” mean when we’re talking about PeopleSoft?
The short answer, according to Marc, is that as long as customers are using the software, then it will be maintained. This is what makes good business sense in this situation. When an organization is receiving value from the system, adopting new system capabilities, and paying its maintenance, then Oracle has funds to invest, improve, and provide support for the system. Practically speaking, it’s a popular system and PeopleSoft is making Oracle money. Supporting it is just good business for everyone.
Looking at high-level metrics, PeopleSoft has thousands of customers, likely tens of thousands of instances, and millions of employees using ESS/MSS and more on a daily basis. It’s very simple. It’s good business to keep investing millions of dollars in PeopleSoft. We’ve seen the results of this investment in, among other things, a completely modern User Interface (Fluid), new features/functions, and frequent updates which each organization can decide when to adopt.
Bottom line, there are thousands of customers using PeopleSoft as a core system for their organizations. It satisfied their past requirements and has/is changing to satisfy current requirements. So how long will support for the PeopleSoft system continue? Indefinitely, which means as long as organizations use it, adopt new images/functions/features, then it will be supported. Right now, according to Marc, that’s a rolling 10-year support schedule.
Go here for more details on Oracle’s commitment to PeopleSoft.