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PeopleSoft

Founded	1987
Defunct	2005
Fate	merger
Successor	Oracle Corporation
Headquarters	Pleasanton, California, USA
Key people	David Duffield, Ken Morris

PeopleSoft, Inc. was a company that provided human resource management systems (HRMS), customer relationship management (CRM), manufacturing, financials, enterprise performance management, and student administration software solutions to large corporations, governments, and organizations. It existed as an independent corporation until its acquisition by Oracle Corporation in 2005; PeopleSoft products and name are now part of the Oracle product line.

Founded in 1987 by David Duffield and Ken Morris, PeopleSoft was originally headquartered in Walnut Creek, California before moving to Pleasanton, California. Duffield envisioned a client-server version of Integral Systems' popular mainframe HRMS package. Once Integral declined development, Duffield was released to pursue this endeavor on his own, and PeopleSoft was born.^[1] PeopleSoft version 1, released in the late 1980s, was the first fully-integrated, robust client-server HRMS application suite.^[1] PeopleSoft expanded its product range to include a Financials Module in 1992-3, Distribution in 1994-5, and Manufacturing in 1996 (via the Red Pepper Acquisition).^[1]

The company acquired J.D. Edwards in 2003. To differentiate its former product line with those of Edwards, PeopleSoft renamed both product lines. In January 2005, PeopleSoft was acquired by Oracle Corporation.

PeopleSoft's product suite (also branded PeopleSoft) was initially based on a client-server architecture.^[1] The entire software suite moved to a web-centric design called Pure Internet Architecture (PIA) with the release of PeopleSoft Version 8.^[1] The new format allowed all of a company's business functions to be accessed and run on a web browser. Originally, a small number of security and system setup functions still needed to be performed on a fat client machine; however, this is no longer the case. One important feature of PeopleSoft's PIA is that no code is required on the client - there is no need for additional plugins, or JVMs such as the Jinitiator required for older Oracle Applications.

The architecture is built around PeopleSoft’s proprietary PeopleTools technology (development platform similar to a 4GL). PeopleTools includes many different components a developer needs to create Web-based application using a SQL database: a scripting language called PeopleCode, design tools to define various types of metadata, standard security structure, and batch processing tools. The metadata describes data for user interfaces, tables, messages, security, navigation, portals, etc. The benefit of creating their own development platform allowed PeopleSoft applications to run on top of many different operating systems and database platforms. Currently, it is not tied to any specific database platform.^[1] PeopleSoft implementations exist or have existed on Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Informix, Sybase, IBM DB2 (including its z/OS, Unix and OS/400 variant s), Oracle Rdb and HP AllBase/SQL.

All of PeopleSoft modules (Human Resources, Supply Chain, Financials, CRM, etc.) are built with PeopleTools technology, an advantage being that all the code which makes up a module can be customized to suit a company’s business needs.

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In 2003, PeopleSoft performed a friendly merger with smaller rival J.D. Edwards. The former rival's similar product line, formerly named J.D. Edwards World on the AS/400 and OneWorld, targeted a different audience: mid-sized companies who could not afford the original PeopleSoft applications. They are differentiated by the Configurable Network Architecture or CNC Architecture. This architecture is designed to shield applications from both the operating system and the database backend as long as some flavor of the SQL language is used. Thus, IBM's DB2/UDB, Microsoft's SQL 2005 and Oracle databases are supported. J.D. Edwards also continues to support thousands of customers on AS/400s running its original J.D. Edwards World or WorldSoftware" product.

J.D Edwards servers can run on a host of operating systems including Linux, Microsoft Windows and IBM's AS/400 operating system. PeopleSoft remains committed to supporting J.D. Edwards's original AS/400-based World software, also called WorldSoftware, the old-style "green screen" application — the same application which drove Duffield to branch out and create PeopleSoft in the first place.

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Beginning in 2003, PeopleSoft battled with Oracle over control of the PeopleSoft company. In June 2003, Oracle made a $7 billion bid ($19.50/share) in a hostile corporate takeover attempt. In February 2004, Oracle increased their bid to approximately $9.4 billion ($26/share), a 33% increase; this offer was also rejected forthwith by PeopleSoft's board of directors. Later that month, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit to block Oracle, on the grounds that the acquisition would break anti-trust laws; however, in September 2004, the suit was rejected by a U.S. Federal judge, who found that the Justice Department had not proven its anti-trust case; in October, the same decision was handed down by the European Commission. Though Oracle had reduced its offer to $7.7 billion ($21/share) in May, it again raised its bid in November to $9.4 billion ($24/share), marking a 14% increase.

In December 2004, Oracle announced that it had signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire PeopleSoft for approximately $10.3 billion ($26.50/share). In January 2005, Oracle made drastic cuts in the PeopleSoft ranks. These cuts affected approximately 9% of the 55,000 staff of the combined companies, but Oracle maintained at least 90% of PeopleSoft's product development and support staff.^[2]

Oracle moved to capitalize on the perceived strong brand loyalty within the JD Edwards user community by rebranding former JD Edwards products. Thus PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne became JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and PeopleSoft World became JD Edwards World.

Oracle has announced that a new product Fusion is to be released in the near future. Oracle says Fusion will take the best aspects of the PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Oracle Applications and merge them into a new product suite.

Oracle continues to support the existing Oracle and PeopleSoft product lines for current users. By retaining current applications and supporting the move to Fusion when appropriate, Oracle may be attempting prevent customer defections to rival Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) vendors.

PeopleSoft projects have been successfully implemented by many users, although there has been one instance of litigation relating to a Student Admin implementation. As with any ERP software, the implementation process (including analysis, planning and development), performance (load) testing and various other types of software testing are critical to the success of the project.

As of 2008^[3], Doris Wong of Oracle quoted the following statistics about PeopleSoft in use:

• 9 of top 10 commercial banks are PS customers
• 59% of top 100 of fortune 500 companies own PS
• Retail - the 5 biggest use PS
• 6 of top 10 communications companies use PeopleSoft
• 60% of the top 15 insurance companies use PeopleSoft
• 70% of top 10 health care organizations use PeopleSoft
• 19 US States use PeopleSoft
• 50 of largest US Counties and Cities use PeopleSoft
• 7 of top 10 Research universities use PeopleSoft
• 8 of top 10 printing and publishing companies use PeopleSoft

An Aberdeen Group survey "PeopleSoft customers are not average when it comes to Human Capital Management (HCM)" indicated:

• PS customers are 41% more likely than industry average to be satisfied
• PS customers outperform industry average in every KPI used to measure best in class
• PS customers demonstrate higher org performance improvement versus industry average
• PS customers leverage automated HCM tools to achieve better ROI on their software investments

In 1997, Cleveland State University licensed PeopleSoft's software for tracking student records. After seven years of difficulties, CSU sued PeopleSoft for $510 million, claiming breach of contract, fraud, negligent misrepresentation and four other counts. The case was settled for $4.25 million in 2005.^[4]. The University also sued Kaludis Inc, the implementation partner responsible for PeopleSoft - that part of the action was settled by a payment of $50,000 by Kaludis to the University, also in 2005 ^[5]

PeopleSoft CEO David Duffield pledged a $20 million donation to Cornell's nanotechnology research building in 1997 which became named Duffield Hall.^[6] In a process beginning in 1995^[7], the university implemented PeopleSoft. There are reports of problems with the implementation as of 2008 ^[8][9] (Note that the article linked to also contains a report of a student who encountered no problems using the system).

The deployment of PeopleSoft payroll and Oracle accounting King County, Washington systems more than doubled in its projected cost.^[10]

California State University was investigated by the state legislature after a $500 million investment in the PeopleSoft solution, finding multiple examples of possible misconduct and unnecessary expense.^[11]

PeopleSoft is also used by electronic commerce giant Fiserv to keep track of interactions and other records for several thousand banks including Bank of America and Navy Federal Credit Union. It is also still being used for customer service for CheckFree Web and MyCheckFree.com.

The largest PeopleSoft system currently planned is for the United States Department of Defense, which has over 10 million people on payroll.^[12]

The largest implementation in the UK, is at Wm Morrison Supermarkets who are implementing PeopleSoft V9 HR, Global Payroll, Absence Management and Time & Labor. Morrisons has over 130,000 employees.

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• 1987: PeopleSoft, Inc. founded by David Duffield and Ken Morris in Walnut Creek, CA, USA.
• 1988: PeopleSoft HRMS released.
• 1991: Begins opening international offices.
• 1994: Public distribution of Distribution and Financials modules.
• 1995: Launch of Student Administration System.
• 1996: Releases Manufacturing and PeopleSoft 6, their first ERP package.
• 1997: PeopleSoft 7 is released within upgraded ERP modules.
• 1998: PeopleSoft 7.5 is released with improved client/server technology. Acquired Intrepid Systems.
• 1999: Craig Conway named new CEO; release products to enable Internet transactions.
• 2000: Acquired Vantive Corporation.
• 2000: Deliver PeopleSoft 8 with an in-house application service provider.
• 2003: Acquired J.D. Edwards
• 2005: Acquired by Oracle Corporation.
• 2006: PeopleSoft FMS 9.0 is released.
• 2006: PeopleSoft HCM 9.0 is released.(December 2006)

• List of ERP software packages
• PeopleTools
• PeopleCode
• Meta-SQL
• Configurable Network Computing JDEdwards proprietary middleware technology acquired in its purchase by PeopleSoft
• PeopleSoft Consultancy (http://www.sennac.com)

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• Peoplesoft Interview Questions and Answers
• PeopleSoft Website
• PeopleSoft Alumni Network - non-profit corporate alumni association of former PeopleSoft employees