PeopleSoft Talk with Marc Weintraub: The PeopleSoft Investment Strategy Featuring Paco Aubrejuan
Here’s a great video explaining a topic we heard come up more than once at this year’s OpenWorld – namely, what is Oracle PeopleSoft’s investment strategy for its go-forward roadmap? This video with Marc Weintraub and Paco Aubrejuan focuses on this entirely, and it’s the best succinct explanation we’ve heard.
The overarching theme is simplification, or reducing complexity. Customer needs are driving Oracle’s PeopleSoft investment. Part of that is post-PC computing: the rise of mobile devices also drives simplification, especially in terms of interface and GUI design. Mobile isn’t mobile, either: we have computers in our pocket that are stronger than desktops from five years ago. Fluid UI presents a native-feeling mobile experience, not a hackneyed tack-on.
We’ve written about this before, but we’ll say it again: the new Fluid User Interface (Fluid UI) is simply massive. Its first focus is casual users/self-service – those who touch the app daily DURING their job, but not AS their job (i.e. they’re not experts). The next level of value is aimed at executives or information users. These are folks who rely on information delivery to make decisions, but don’t necessarily have any role in data entry or creation. Fluid UI makes information presentation much easier and more visually engaging. In a nutshell, data becomes information automatically.
When it comes to PeopleSoft Fluid UI, the first customer reaction is surprise – they can believe they’re looking at PeopleSoft. It’s exactly what end users are looking for. Because of Fluid UI, customers want to adopt this quickly, and it’s driving more upgrades to 9.2 than anyone anticipated. Likewise, it’s driving Tools 8.54 adoption (because it’s is a requirement).
PeopleSoft Selective Adoption is the next main investment pillar. We’ve written about this before, but this is new functionality that allows you to pick and choose what upgrades and functionality you want – use what you need and discard the rest. Not only does this simplify things from a maintenance perspective, but it also helps IT keep in line with the changing strategic business needs more cleanly than ever before.
In your previous life, prior to PeopleSoft Selective Adoption, the landscape looked like this:
- Steady state software was not conducive to IT & Line of Business interactions
- Requests for new functionality were generally delivered through customizations
- Too much money spent on maintenance, yet customers always felt behind
- Upgrades were disruptive and costly, with few new capabilities
Now:
- Easy
- Modern
- Seamless
- Pick the updates/functionality you want
- Oracle aligning with the speed of customers’ business transformation: moving from waterfall-based releases to an iterative development model
Oracle’s new focus is clearly about the customer side of the equation, not what’s necessarily best for Oracle’s development model or engineering direction. So much good stuff here. The video is more than worth 16 minutes of your time.
