Only days after Oracle has sealed a deal to buy
PeopleSoft, Microsoft is offering its advice to PeopleSoft
customers.
"Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft may be moving forward, but
difficult technology decisions lie ahead," Bill Veghte, Microsoft's
corporate vice-president in charge of sales, services and marketing
efforts in the US and Canada, wrote in a letter sent to PeopleSoft
customers on Wednesday.
In the letter, Veghte pitched Microsoft's technologies as
offering lower costs, lower complexity, better manageability,
greater productivity and more extension capabilities. Veghte until
recently was corporate vice-president for the Windows server
group.
"It is about choices," Veghte wrote in the letter, much of
which focused on promoting the Windows platform and Microsoft
products such as SQL Server and technologies such as .net web
services.
Veghte offered three options: extending PeopleSoft installations
with Microsoft web services technologies; moving PeopleSoft
software to Windows and SQL Server from Unix and Oracle's database;
and replacing PeopleSoft's enterprise resource planning (ERP)
software with a competing product running on Windows.
"Migration to another ERP product, including Microsoft Business
Solutions, SAP and other partner ERP products on the Microsoft
platform are additional options available to PeopleSoft customers
seeking greater clarity around technology direction and platform
alignment," Veghte wrote.
Microsoft's courting of PeopleSoft customers is one example of
competing suppliers looking to take full advantage of any confusion
on the part of current and potential Oracle and PeopleSoft
customers. After a lengthy takeover battle, Oracle has an agreement
to buy PeopleSoft, but still faces the gargantuan task of
integrating the two companies.
Joris Evers writes for the IDG News Service