PeopleSoft Customers Not Likely To Jump ShipPeopleSoft Customers Not Likely To Jump Ship

A pre-merger survey by the Yankee Group of 193 PeopleSoft customers in December and January showed that 46% of them expected to migrate to other vendors' applications. It was evident at the time that Oracle's takeover bid was increasingly likely to succeed.

But while some may yet go to rival application vendors such as Microsoft, SAP, and Siebel Systems, most are likely to end up in Oracle's arms, says a Yankee Group BrandMonitor survey. Oracle will have to foul up service and support to turn PeopleSoft customers away from adopting either Oracle's current application set or the planned Fusion suite of merged Oracle-PeopleSoft-J.D. Edwards applications due in 2007 and 2008. "Oracle needs to operate a solid defensive strategy and it can prevail" over rivals, the study says.

The survey report also points out that PeopleSoft was the leading vendor of human-resources-management applications, and through the acquisition Oracle gained "the golden nugget" of being the HR application provider for 70% of the 1,000 largest U.S. companies. These customers are unlikely to migrate to a non-Oracle supplier, analyst Philip Fersht concludes, if Oracle follows through on its promised support and Fusion apps.