Oracle Lowers Upgrade Hurdle For Some PeopleSoft And J.D. Edwards App UsersOracle Lowers Upgrade Hurdle For Some PeopleSoft And J.D. Edwards App Users

Users of some PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards applications will have a direct upgrade path to Oracle's future Fusion applications instead of having to upgrade to non-Fusion releases of Oracle applications first, according to John Wookey, Oracle senior VP for applications.

Wookey said users of PeopleSoft Enterprise 8.8 and users of J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne XE 8.0 wouldn't need to make any intermediate upgrades, if they choose not to, to get to the Fusion Project's redesigned Java applications that Oracle is planning to issue in 2007 and 2008.

In addition, he committed Oracle to support J.D. Edwards Enterprise One XE 8.0 through 2013. Oracle had previously said it would support that application only through June 2007. Enterprise One XE is an IBM AS/400 server-based application suite and Oracle previously didn't offer any applications on the AS/400.

"Customers of PeopleSoft Enterprise 8.8 will have a direct upgrade path. They don't have to go through releases 8.9 or 9.0. They don't need to do anything until 2013," Wookey said.

Wookey acknowledged that many customers don't necessarily want to go through two or more upgrades before getting to Fusion and have been expressing concern about their upgrade path.

Oracle also will add dashboard interfaces to its PeopleSoft Enterprise customer-relationship-management applications for graphical presentation of results from sales, service, order-capture, help desk for IT, and help desk for human resources operations. A dashboard summarizes key data into graphical metrics that measure how well a business is performing.

Wookey said Oracle was combining its own business-activity-monitoring capabilities, where the activity levels of specific business processes are monitored, with PeopleSoft CRM apps to produce operational dashboards.

Expanding on the earlier announcement of lifetime support for PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards applications, Juergen Rottler, executive VP of Oracle support, said the lifetime support approach will consist of premier support for five years after purchase, extended support for an additional three years, and sustaining support for any period thereafter.

Premier support, if it matches Oracle annual maintenance contracts, would cost 22% of the application purchase price, according to comments by Charles Phillips during a question and answer session at Oracle OpenWorld on Monday.

Extended support will increase the maintenance fee 10% to 20% over those three years, according to Oracle. At the end of the extended period of support, pricing would revert to the premium level.