TOE represents PeopleSoft’s intention to apply technology to improve all aspects of its customers’ experience. Relevant to all stages of the application lifecycle, president and CEO Craig Conway said the company plans to commit hundreds of millions of dollars and over 500 developers to the TOE initiative. Its primary objective is to make installation and implementation of PeopleSoft applications faster, and integration easier and cheaper.

It is as big a deal as the move to its pure Internet architecture was back in 2000 because the ramifications are both wide and deep, reaching into every aspect of the operation and the application portfolio, from automated upgrade and support programs, to improved usability to boost user productivity and effectiveness, through to the way professional services are provided.

Executive VP for products and technologies Ram Gupta stressed that TOE is multi-dimensional in nature because it impacts the way IT personnel work with the applications, how users do their jobs, and how vendors develop their applications. The aim is to reduce the level of manual effort by providing for greater levels of automation and out-of-the-box deployment.

While there is an ongoing need to address implementation and integration issues, and PeopleSoft appears to be putting real money and concerted effort into addressing them, the TOE initiative is also a high-profile marketing effort embarked on in the face of poor market conditions and a low spending, maturing market.

Enterprise software at enterprise level companies is maturing. There is not a major company without it [so] they are looking for innovation in the ownership area, said Conway, who said that in maturing industries buyers are confident that they can get the necessary feature set, so they shift their focus to the quality of their experience.

As always, the crux of the matter is financial. The combination of a mature market and depressed capital expenditure raises the question of where enterprise vendors will look to for future growth, and this is where TOE meets growth head on.

[A maturing market] doesn’t mean there is no growth, said Conway, but it does mean vendors have to work harder and be more innovative in their approach. He added: the ease of ownership experience acts as a catalyst for spending. The vision of the Pleasanton, California-based company is that as the cost of integration goes away, it frees up money for capital expenditure on new projects and the software to enable them.

Source: Computerwire