The PeopleSoft Tipster Blog

Why we won’t need a PeopleSoft v9.3 November 25, 2014

I caught up with Paco Aubrejuan’s “PeopleSoft Townhall” webinar from Quest the other day. Paco is Senior VP of Development for the PeopleSoft product line and it was a really interesting listen. The session can be found here, although you need to sign-up with Quest to view it. It’s an hour long and he discusses the future direction of the PeopleSoft product family plus the new simplified and mobile user experience for PeopleSoft, the new Fluid User Interface (UI) and the delivery model of more frequent, customer-driven product enhancements which is enabled by PeopleSoft Update Manager.

Most interestingly for me though, was the Q&A section at the end. Paco tackled the v9.3 question head on. I’ve transcribed his words, and I think it’s a strong and positive message for those with an interest in the PeopleSoft product line. Here are the ‘best bits’:

On PUM:

We’re calling our model PeopleSoft Selective Adoption … and let me be specific about what it means, we’re going to deliver new capabilities about 2 to 3 times a year (and may deliver some functionality more frequent than that). Once you’re on 9.2 you can get this functionality without upgrading ever.

On PeopleSoft v9.3:

Should I upgrade to PeopleSoft 9.2 or should I wait for 9.3? There is no 9.3. We don’t have a 9.3 codeline, there’s no 9.3 plan, our plan is to never do a 9.3 and we’re going to continuously deliver on 9.2 using the PeopleSoft Selective Adoption and so you should not be waiting for a 9.3. … We’re just going to continue extending the timelines for PeopleSoft 9.2 so the idea is that there is no more upgrade and premier support will just continue.

On why a 9.3 isn’t needed:

The risk we take with saying that there’s no 9.3 is that people read into that and say that PeopleSoft is dead. … That’s not true. The investment level that we’re making in the product does not change with this delivery model at all. … We’re delivering all the Fluid functionality without a new release. We’ve never done that before. The only thing that this is comparable to is the 8.0 version when we moved from client-server to the internet, and that was a major release. We’re now doing something equivalent to that without even a minor release. It’s now just selective features that you can take as long as you’re on 8.54. So PeopleSoft is not dead, and having no PeopleSoft 9.3 does not mean that PeopleSoft is dead.

So, we now have a definitive answer to the v9.3 question. I think it’s a strong and positive message which is backed up with evidence of the investment that Oracle are putting in to the product family, and a nod to the fact that PeopleSoft is adapting its model to the changing needs of the customer.