DSXchange

Hi All

What is the future of Peoplesoft EPM 8.8 and EPM 8.9 after the Oracle takeover of Peoplesoft ??
I've heard that Oracle will be coming up with fusion architecture for the whole suite, so what would be the future of the ETL tool Ascential Datastage with the Oracle Fusion EPM product.
Any Ideas ??

Himanshu Parmar
Peoplesoft EPM Consultant
Citagus Software Pvt Ltd.
www.citagus.com

Why ask us? You work for PeopleSoft, for goodness' sake! Ask them, and let us know!

As far as the DataStage connectivity is concerned, no-one has revealed anything to anyone outside the company, but their track record in keeping up with technology has been fairly good in the past. Let's hope IBM internal procedures don't impact that too much. (I recall once when a new UniVerse (that's IBM U2 UniVerse) release was ready to ship it was put on hold because it was too close to a new DB2 release, and might steal some of the thunder. Would have, in my opinion.)

I am a client of PeopleSoft and have the EPM package
Version 8.8 SP2 comes with
Ascential 7.1r1
Microstrategy 7.52

Version 8.9 comes with
Ascential 7.5 with Metastage
Crystal Reports 9

PeopleTools 8.4 is included in both

From what I can tell, they are staying with Ascential for the time being, but it is aparent that they are moving towards Business Objects as the OLAP tool.

There will be new releases of PeopleSoft EPM until 2006 at which point it is likely to move into support only through to 2013, so the DataStage PeopleSoft agreement will stay in place for existing PeopleSoft EPM customers for a long time.

The successor product suite, Project Fusion, will replace both Oracle and Peoplesoft applications and will be based on an SOA architecture and is due for delivery in 2007/2008. Oracle retained 90% of PeopleSoft developers to help with Project Fusion.

DataStage had two agreements with PeopleSoft - UPGRADE and EPM. For the rapid upgrade product they use a very simple and completely embedded DataStage engine for delivering changes to factory data in new releases. For PeopleSoft EPM they have DataStage for PeopleSoft that is a full running Server Edition license for 2 CPUs. For an additional fee you can upgrade this license to Enterprise Edition.

In Project Fusion I think the upgrade deal will be scrapped while an ETL may be up for negotiation. The language of the Oracle PeopleSoft merger FAQ suggests they will build their own upgrade automation.

Q: How will Oracle make the upgrade to the equivalent Oracle license or successor product set smoother and less costly?
A: We have done an enormous amount of research and development work already to make upgrading Oracle products smoother and more efficient. We plan to devote significant resources to building automation scripts to isolate the data and customizations and make the upgrade to the successor product set as straightforward as possible for those customers who choose it. Over time, as the combined companies and partners invest in migration technologies, it will become easier to upgrade. Oracle's access to development resources from both companies will enable the completion of these tools as soon as possible.

Certainly writing your own upgrade automation is a lot easier then writing your own DW loads. So the big question is whether the ETL vendors are going to get a shot at Project Fusion. A lot depends on whether the next generation of Oracle data warehouse products only work with Oracle databases, which means they can beef up OWB and do not need a database independent ETL engine.