Summary

January 21, 2005 - Oracle's management held a "Better Together" launch event to discuss the future of the applications business now that the PeopleSoft acquisition has been completed. The company emphasized (again) its commitment to supporting the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards installed bases through 2013 and laid out a product roadmap that included major upgrades to applications from the two companies. Ventana Research believes management has every intention of making the merger work well. It is clearly in its best interest to offer a world-beating next generation application suite, planned for completion in 2008. We think PeopleSoft and JD Edwards users should proceed with caution in making commitments beyond existing releases in production. Ventana Research advises organizations to monitor the progress of the integration of the two companies over the next year before adopting new releases.