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Alan Kahn, Co-CEO of Interdyn AKA, comments
on Microsoft's new PeopleSoft migration program in a recent
Infoworld article
By Stacy Cowley, IDG News Service
January 10, 2005
NEW YORK - Hoping to lure away PeopleSoft (Profile, Products,
Articles) customers nervous about Oracle's (Profile, Products,
Articles) acquisition of their vendor, Microsoft (Profile,
Products, Articles) is launching a migration program offering
PeopleSoft customers licensing and support discounts on
Microsoft's rival business applications.
Microsoft is offering migration guides, a 25 percent licensing
discount, and a 25 percent discount on the first year of
maintenance and support to PeopleSoft customers who buy
software from the Microsoft Dynamics (MBS) portfolio by
June 22. MBS is the group that created Microsoft CRM (customer
relationship management) and houses Microsoft's acquired
Great Plains and Navision accounting, e-commerce, analytics
and human resource management applications. The migration
program, offered globally, is available through Microsoft's
channel of sales and implementation partners.
Microsoft has sent mixed signals about its interest in
and ability to compete with PeopleSoft at the high end of
the ERP (enterprise resource planning) market. When the
U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) dragged Oracle to court
last year to contest its PeopleSoft merger plans, MBS head
Doug Burgum appeared as a DOJ witness to testify that Microsoft's
business applications are suitable only for small and midsize
companies. Burgum went so far as to admit problems with
deploying MBS's Axapta software at office supplies maker
Esselte, a company whose more than $1 billion in annual
sales places it among the largest of Microsoft's business
applications customers.
Despite Burgum's claims -- which the trial judge dismissed
as unreliable and self-serving -- Microsoft continues to
hold up its products as an option for almost any back-office
need.
"There is a recent and strong history in PeopleSoft customers
looking at our solutions since all of this news has been
going on," MBS Corporate Vice President of Marketing and
Strategy Tami Reller said Monday. Microsoft's migration
offer covers all three of PeopleSoft's product sets, the
World and EnterpriseOne applications PeopleSoft acquired
from J.D. Edwards and the Enterprise software it aimed at
its biggest and most complex customers.
"If you look at the world's largest enterprises, those
companies are typically going to go with a non-Microsoft
solution for their hubs, but their divisions could use a
Microsoft solution," Reller said.
One Microsoft partner hoping to take advantage of the offer,
New York-based services firm InterDyn AKA, said all seven
of the PeopleSoft-to-Great Plains migration projects it
has done in the past few years have been classic midmarket
deployments of 100 or fewer seats. InterDyn AKA President
Alan Kahn has seen increased interest in his firm's migration
services since PeopleSoft began wrangling with Oracle nearly
two years ago, but he doesn't think any of the deals AKA
landed were primarily motivated by merger concerns.
"We haven't closed any specific deals since it became clear
PeopleSoft would be bought," Kahn said. AKA's customers
have generally chosen to migrate to reduce costs and simplify
their IT infrastructure, he said. For smaller organizations
that rely on Windows and Microsoft's Office applications,
Microsoft business applications can be easier to integrate
and use than PeopleSoft's more complex software.
That was why the American Bible Society decided several
years ago to migrate from J.D. Edwards applications to Great
Plains, according to Chief Technology Officer Nick Garbidakis.
Paying a new round of licensing fees to buy the Great Plains
software was still cheaper than continuing to pay maintenance
and support fees to J.D. Edwards, and the Great Plains applications
work more easily with the other Microsoft software the organization
runs, Garbidakis said.
The American Bible Society, a New York nonprofit ministry,
has 100 of its 200 staffers using an assortment of MBS products
and add-ons from outside vendors, Garbidakis said. Working
with AKA, the group completed its migration in several months
and without any significant technical problems. Persuading
users to accept the new software was the biggest challenge,
Garbidakis said.
"Once they accepted it, they were much happier with the
software," he said.
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