There are few surprises in PeopleSoft Inc’s PeopleSoft 7.0, which the company has duly launched some three months ahead of schedule, as promised back in April (CI No 3,146). The new upgrade is a ‘technology release’, as opposed to a ‘functionality release’, the company said, and as such, is not likely to be snapped up by many European companies, which are more likely to wait until next April, when release 7.5 will give them internationalization of major applications such as financial. The company’s vice president technology Rick Bergquist says this is a ‘huge release’ in terms of technology updates, but its main features are a Java-based web client, which uses BEA Systems Inc’s Jolt middleware to open access to PeopleSoft applications to ‘occasional users’ across the internet or intranet; a three- tier architecture option enabling applications to run on an application server separate from the database server and client, which enhances performance by reducing wide area network traffic in particular; and OLAP online analytical processing integration with the introduction of Cube Manager, which automatically transfers data and metadata from the transaction processing system and will integrate with Cognos Inc’s PowerPlay for the desktop, or Arbor Software Corp’s Essbase for multidimensional analysis at the data mart level. The company says users have the option to stick with Windows clients or go with browser-based clients. They can also mix and match two and three-tier architectures to suit, and chose from Windows NT, and four flavors of Unix – Sun Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and Digital Unix to run their application servers. The release also sees general availability of the company’s Universal Applications, for simplified access to applications over the web, and the Application Designer integrated development tool, as well as two new manufacturing and distribution applications, Product Configurator and Engineering. Bergquist reckons in the US, some 20% of the company’s existing users are dying to do business on the internet, and are likely to upgrade to version 7.0 immediately. The rest may let the early adopters get on with it. In Europe, where PeopleSoft still very much plays second fiddle to SAP AG, Bergquist admits a few new customers may go for release 7.0, but the rest will no doubt wait for the applications to be updated in 7.5. PeopleSoft 7.0 will ship in a few weeks.
