Is PeopleSoft a Dying Breed of Software?
As the founder of PSoftPros - the knowledge sharing community and the career board (www.PSoftPros.com), I am often asked "Is PeopleSoft dead?" I also hear discussions and talk from other PeopleSoft Pros saying "It's over", or "PeopleSoft has had its hey day". Well, none of this can be farther from the truth.
Then why are there so few PeopleSoft contracts and jobs out there?
What we are experiencing right now in this industry is the same thing that every other market and industry is facing. Companies are tightening their belts and budgets are shrinking, because we are in uncertain times. Because of this, the job and consulting market in the PeopleSoft industry is not flourishing as it was a year ago. Furthermore, the PeopleSoft Pros that do have full time jobs are not leaving. Everyone is staying right where they are in these uncertain economic times.
But, let me assure you that there are plenty of customers implementing, upgrading, and enhancing their PeopleSoft applications. Most of my clients are saying that they are going to do it in-house and take their time, rather than hire consultants.
I believe this is a temporary situation that will correct itself after the new year. Mid January is when companies will begin to ramp up and prepare for upcoming projects and add to their staff.
If you know something more about the current market situation, or if you just want to chime in with your comments, please add your comments below.
Then why are there so few PeopleSoft contracts and jobs out there?
What we are experiencing right now in this industry is the same thing that every other market and industry is facing. Companies are tightening their belts and budgets are shrinking, because we are in uncertain times. Because of this, the job and consulting market in the PeopleSoft industry is not flourishing as it was a year ago. Furthermore, the PeopleSoft Pros that do have full time jobs are not leaving. Everyone is staying right where they are in these uncertain economic times.
But, let me assure you that there are plenty of customers implementing, upgrading, and enhancing their PeopleSoft applications. Most of my clients are saying that they are going to do it in-house and take their time, rather than hire consultants.
I believe this is a temporary situation that will correct itself after the new year. Mid January is when companies will begin to ramp up and prepare for upcoming projects and add to their staff.
If you know something more about the current market situation, or if you just want to chime in with your comments, please add your comments below.
Tags: consulting, job, market, oracle, peoplesoft
18 Comments
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Comment by Eric Johnson on December 4, 2008 at 10:51am -
I agree also... PeopleSoft isn't dead but the IT market as a whole is "taking a short nap"!
There is work available, you may have to adjust your rate a little, gone are the days of charging $150/$170 an hour. But if you are willing to adjust, there is plenty of upgrade/Production support work available.
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Comment by Roy Joslin on December 4, 2008 at 11:27am -
Here is a post I did recently on a presentation by Marc Weintraub, Director of PeopleSoft Product Strategy.
PeopleSoft Lives on at Quest Southest (http://pswisdom.com/?p=45)
Last week I attended the Quest Southeast Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Before attending the conference I asked a question.
Will the PeopleSoft Enterprise suite continue to receive plenty of support?
The resounding answer is Yes!
Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus. And Yes, there will be vibrant PeopleSoft products available forever! Well, maybe forever is an overstatement but it does look like our favorite applications suite will be around for a number of years.
Marc Weintraub, Director of PeopleSoft Product Strategy, gave an excellent presentation entitled PeopleSoft Applications & Investment Strategy. Marc covered much ground both functionally and technically. On the technical side one can definitely see Oracle’s strong commitment to web 2.0 including collaboration, tags, threaded discussions, wikis, and imbedded analytics. All these and more will be featured in the upcoming PeopleTools 8.5 release. These new technologies will not be just fancy add-ons but will be put to good use enhancing the functional side. Marc’s slides did show some bona fide improvements in the user experience that many current customers will find attractive. Hint! Hint! Much of it is already well into the testing phases so look for something from Oracle before 2009 gets too long in the tooth.
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Comment by Ramesh Vankayala on December 4, 2008 at 11:34am
- I agree about the current situation. But you never know what Larry has in his store for PeopleSoft. Lets not forget this nature and marketing strategy, Oracle is basically a database company and they make money on Databases. Fusion also on the horizon. Eventually PeopleSoft will fade away. There is a difference between what you don't want to happen and what would like to happen. We should all be realistic and have a back up plan. My 2 cents. Sorry.
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Comment by James on December 4, 2008 at 11:39am
- I agree with Ramesh, but remember the Fusion product will have a good deal of look and feel of the current PES applications (HRMS I am spreaking to) and jsut think of the consulting heyday when companies have to start moving to fusion !!
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Comment by Derek Tomei on December 4, 2008 at 11:40am
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Hey Ramesh, No need to be sorry. We all value your comments and opinion as much as the next person. However, I do think that Oracle is now much more than a database company. In my opinion, with all of the latest Oracle take-overs they are now rising to become THE largest database and middleware company. In addition to that, they are leading in the ERP applications industry.
Basically, Oracle owns the whole stack (database, middleware, application) with the exception of the O/S.
I dont think they can easily get rid of PeopleSoft. Especially HCM.
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Comment by Inbavannan on December 4, 2008 at 12:20pm
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Are the following details published anywhere in the web? :
1. # of NEW Peoplesoft licenses sold during 2008
2. # of SAP / other ERP customers who switched over to Peoplesoft during 2008 (and vice versa)
3. $$ values related to both the numbers above
4. # of Peoplesoft customers who accepted to upgrade and did upgrade to a higher version during 2008
5. # of Peoplesoft customers who hated the idea of forced upgrade and switched to cheaper alternatives (like Microsoft dynamics, for e.g.)
Without having such statistics, it would be pure guess-work to say whether Peoplesoft is dying or alive & kicking. Ofcourse new sales alone does not contribute to consultant assignments but that is a main indicator as to the longevity of this field as more and more org's turn to internal resources (or resources abroad) for upgrade / support tasks.
Unless a product is selling and conquering customers, the end of the road is not far:-)
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Comment by K. Raemuse Brooks on December 4, 2008 at 12:54pm
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Based upon the Fusion Roadmap and the integration of products like OBIEE and OBIA with PeopleSoft EPM, I think PeopleSoft will always be around is some fashion. Granted the middleware transformation will be different. However, too many companies have deeply invested in PeopleSoft to change at the same speed of Oracle's Roadmap.
Look at the large government projects currently inflight and you may be surprised at the number of Public Sector clients still implementing PS.
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Comment by Oracle on December 5, 2008 at 8:24am
- Ramesh.. I agree with you on the point that you should have a backup plan, but that's with any line of work, you have to update yourself with the lastest to keep up in this world. Regarding, Larry, I don't think he bought PeopleSoft just to kill the product. There are a lot of companies on PS and if and when PS is retired he is bound to loose a lot of business and revenue. There are lots of companies that have the manpower and expertise to support the companies on PS. I believe PS is going to be here for a long time under Oracle.
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Comment by Mark Sinn on December 6, 2008 at 8:42am
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I believe there is a strong future in the PeopleSoft software family. Version 9.0 is generating all the work out there now, but just wait for 9.1 !!! Release 9.1 will create huge buzz and will be very exciting. It is packed with great new functionality across the products and will include a full list of new tools features.
PeopleSoft HR is still the leader and standard in it's market. I would compare Financials, ESA and SCM favorably against any other vendor. Remember, PeopleSoft was only a Software company , not a database company branching out to be a software company.
PeopleSoft is a strong contributor to Oracle's bottom line, but don't expect to see a detailed breakout.
Existing customers chose PeopleSoft due to it's functionality, toolset and Quality (yes, quality!). The underlying foundation of PeopleSoft such as setids, effective dating, commitment control and PeopleTools are just the beginning of a strong list of problem solving features of PSFT.
Current customers may not be likely to see a compelling argument to move to Fusion until a few versions are released.
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Thank You Senthil. That makes sense.
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