April 25, 2005

Oracle's middleware platform is being integrated and prepared to work with legacy PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards applications, following Oracle's acquisition of both companies last year.

This is an important development because, in the wake of Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft, there are plenty of customers of rival middleware products that Oracle can now target.

"Prior to the acquisition, PeopleSoft had only certified on competitors' middleware products," says Rick Schultz, VP of product marketing for Oracle.

"Lots of customers are using middleware from IBM or BEA. We are responding to those customers asking Oracle for a middleware option."

Oracle has announced a roadmap for this option -- which, by the way, does not require PeopleSoft users to upgrade their applications. The roadmap has two phases. Oracle will prepare some of its middleware components for use with PeopleSoft applications in Q2 of this year, adding in the rest of the components by Q4. For J.D. Edwards, the first phase is Q3 of this year, and the second in Q1 2006.

Oracle is taking the phased approach in the interest of speed, with Schultz implying that many legacy PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards customers do not want to wait for a 'big bang' Oracle middleware option but would rather see components become available as soon as possible.

Going beyond the classic components of middleware, Oracle is also preparing its development tools, data integration technology (what Oracle calls data hubs), and some business activity monitoring (BAM) functionality ready as part of the PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards certifications. Oracle has not yet released specific pricing and packaging information.

One thing that is for certain is that the certification has the capability to bring legacy PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards much closer to becoming Oracle shops. However, there were very close technology alliances between those companies and their incumbent middleware partners (particularly IBM), so it remains to be see how they will react en masse to the Oracle option.

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