Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2003/09/19/peoplesoft_support_promises_good/

Peoplesoft support promises – good for customers

...Slap in Oracle's face

By News IS

Posted in Software, 19th September 2003 09:59 GMT

PeopleSoft continues to put nails in the coffin of the Oracle bid for the company, and this week has committed to extended support for both its own applications and for those acquired from JD Edwards, for an extra two years.

The standard contract for a release of Peoplesoft has been four years of upgrades and updates, but now tax and regulatory updates are promised to extend to six years from first general availability of a release and the company will continue to offer upgrade scripts to new versions for five years after a release comes out. It will continue technical support for each release indefinitely.

Oracle had raised the specter of support for Peoplesoft products evaporating when it first proposed to take the company over, saying that it would force customers to shift over to Oracle.

It adjusted its position to one where the two product sets would gradually merge. But even this gave the impression that it would cease support early, in order to encourage Peoplesoft customers to shift to this new common code base. Now, in the unlikely even that Oracle is successful with its bid for Peoplesoft it would inherit this extended support promise.

"PeopleSoft already has the best support policy in the industry, but we will continue to strive for ways to improve it," said Ram Gupta, executive vice president, Products and Technology, PeopleSoft. "Today's announcement of our enhanced support offering demonstrates PeopleSoft's commitment to providing customers a superior total ownership experience."

PeopleSoft support professionals provide customers with real-time support with more than 1600 support professionals located around the world in locations including Amsterdam, Denver, Pleasanton, Sao Paulo, Sydney and Vancouver.

The enhanced support is available for current and future releases of PeopleSoft's internet-based applications, PeopleSoft 8.0 and above, PeopleSoft Enterprise, and J.D. Edwards 5. For PeopleSoft 7.5 customers, PeopleSoft will continue to provide direct upgrade scripts and upgrade support to PeopleSoft 8.8 releases of Human Capital Management, Financial Management and Supply Chain Management throughout 2004.

© Rethink Research

News IS is published weekly by Rethink Research and edited by Caroline Gabriel.