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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.

Tags: consulting, job, market, oracle, peoplesoft

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Comment by Abhijit on April 24, 2009 at 10:51am: I have been in this industry for over 12 years now and in the past 2-3 years or so I have seen a shift in business model with respect to application business. The first change was projects moving offshore. Technical work has really moved offshore. I have seen at numerous clients where I have to interact with off-shore service partners. The second shift is an important one where business are leveraging the Software as Service model. Clients are getting more friendly in terms of changing the whole practice of managing HCM business. Dave Duffield wouldn't venture to create one model which he doesn't think would be successful.
Having said that, I don't believe more than 100000 clients who have implemented ERP applications across different vendors would move to SaS. But what we would see for sure is clients doing more with less resulting in fewer opportunities.
Coming to PeopleSoft HCM product - This has evolved over the time. The shift of doing more with less is so evident in the new products coming out of the suite. the gap between a functional role and technical role is bridging closer. Products like Absence Management, Global Payroll, EPM, TAM are few that I can think off. The new approval framework is a gray area where a lot of client expects functional people to do execute it. Most of the product lines are designed where a functional user absolutely needs to know technical programming logic in order to execute his jobs. The way the products are shaping in HCM gives us a clear signal of things to come. Its an opportunity for us to embrace this change and to train ourselves for the inevitable - before fusion comes in next 3-4 years timeframe where a client expects functional and technical role to be conducted by one person.
SQR's are still being used. But in the last year or so, I have seen smaller clients going forward with open standard XML reports.
One should embrace the change and hone their skills constantly in order to thrive in this competitive market.

Comment by Senthil on April 6, 2009 at 11:11pm: I totally disagree with jsoft.

Languages do not define an ERP and is actually irrelevant. In fact, I have seen couple of other ERPs in action and none of those come close to PSFT's Architecture and its User Interface. So much so that the Fusion apps borrows ideas from it. I am a PSFT Systems analyst and I don't really remember the last time I had to look at a COBOL program. To be honest, I don't think there are much COBOLs anymore. I don't get the point about SQR though. In my narrow experience, I haven't really seen anyone write a reporting program in Java or Perl.

As to the point on "Any software that refuses to keep up with computer science is a dying breed of software" - most of the mission critical applications in the U.S are still maintained on legacy systems and IBM still sells a lot of mainframes and related products. Banking, insurance and airline industries are an example. You wouldn't be able to use an ATM or pay a bill online if not for those legacy systems. Sure their UI might be fashionable but the backbone of ATMs, Credit Card networks, payment networks are legacy systems. Lack of human talent might be a bigger problem for old softwares than lack of capability.

Comment by Carol on January 14, 2009 at 11:41pm: I worked with SAP for 8 months last year and could not want to get back to PeopleSoft. IMO PeopleSoft is more customer friendly, less convoluted, and flexible - it allows customers to customized it if they need to without an active of congress or the blessing of Germany!

But then again, my opinion is a bit biases in PeopleSoft favor, simply because I have worked with it for the last 11 years. I have heard of a number of SCM customers, who have switched to Oracle and SAP. The SCM market has been short since fall '07 IMO.

Oracle is introducing a lot of new modules, but it is difficult to get training, at least it is in SO Cal, and it is expenses.

Comment by Carol on January 14, 2009 at 11:29pm: I worked with SAP for 8 months last year and could not want to get back to PeopleSoft. IMO PeopleSoft is more customer friendly, less convoluted, and flexible - it allows customers to customized it if they need to without an active of congress or the blessing of Germany!

But then again, my opinion is a bit biases in PeopleSoft favor, simply because I have worked with it for the last 11 years. I have heard of a number of SCM customers, who have switched to Oracle and SAP. The SCM market has been short since fall '07 IMO.

Oracle is introducing a lot of new modules, but it is difficult to get training, at least it is in SO Cal, and it is expenses.

Comment by Jim Marion on January 9, 2009 at 1:18pm: jsoft, the coffee brewed up in Pleasanton smells pretty good.

Comment by Jim Marion on January 9, 2009 at 1:15pm: jsoft, we don't think you are rude. An idealist maybe, but not rude. I hope you find that silver bullet ERP out there. When you do, let us know what it is. I think it is called Fusion apps (Java, J2EE, JSF), but it isn't ready yet.

By the way, PeopleSoft doesn't hold on to Cobol/SQR. Consultants do, but PS doesn't. Of course, when you have a working program, it isn't practical to rewrite it just because there is a new language. Can you imagine rewriting all your code every time a new language appears? From PS 8.4 to 9.0, there are less Cobol's, SQR's, and Crystal Reports. As needed, PS has migrated those Cobol's/SQR's to more modern languages. There are some left. That doesn't mean PS is holding onto them. It just means it isn't cost effective to migrate them just for the sake of technology. I suppose Oracle could inflate the price of PS to cover the cost, but what CEO/CIO would pay for that? Shareholders and customers require a good business case for migration.

PS does keep up. Note the amount of Java, J2EE, and Ajax in modern PS instances. Perl? Not in PS. I wouldn't exactly call that "modern." Ruby? Sure, if you want to, you can use Ruby with PS. Write some Ruby and use JRuby to run it from PeopleCode. RoR with PS? Why not? Just use a Web service ActiveRecord implementation and go for it.

Comment by jsoft on January 8, 2009 at 4:13pm: I totally disagree and at the risk of sounding rude, I'm not sorry. Somebody needs to stop living in denial here. I have been doing software development for many years and PeopleSoft is easily the most antiquated hard to use software I have ever seen. It holds onto cobol/sqr based programing mechanisms when much stronger languages are available...Java, Perl, etc... Any software that refuses to keep up with computer science is a dying breed of software.

I just see far too many people naively making excuses for bad software these days. I think maybe people are so used to poorly crafted software that they just assume it has to be that way. For the sake of rational thinking, wake up and smell the coffee.

-no offense

Comment by Jim Marion on January 6, 2009 at 1:44pm: PeopleSoft is still the most flexible ERP system in the world. Based on user group conference previews of PeopleTools 8.5, PeopleSoft is about to return to its leadership position as the most user friendly software in the world. Given the visible investment in PeopleSoft applications and the PeopleSoft UI, PeopleSoft does not look or sound like a dead ERP system.

Comment by Mark Sinn on December 6, 2008 at 8:42am: 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.

Comment by VJ 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.