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To: Michael Young who wrote (340)	10/25/2000 11:08:20 PM
From: Michael Young	Respond to of 499

PeopleSoft Pushes Forward With Turnaround (10/24/00, 3:48 p.m. ET) By Antone Gonsalves, TechWeb News On the heels of a turnaround quarter, PeopleSoft Inc. is keeping the momentum going with its focus on the corporate supply chain, customer relationship management, and online trading exchanges. The Pleasanton, Calif., company announced this week at its PeopleSoft 2000 user group conference in Los Angeles a new online financial settlement system called MarketPay and an expansion of its PeopleSoft MarketPlace exchange technology to help manage human resources, including benefits, staffing, and travel. The company also unveiled new capabilities for PeopleSoft 8 CRM and faster deployment option for its supply chain applications, called PeopleSoft Supply Chain in a Box. Following a year of flat revenue and falling stock prices, PeopleSoft (stock: PSFT) has managed to turn itself around in 2000. The most significant indicator of a comeback was a 100 percent increase in software license revenues reported last week in its third quarter ending Sept. 30, which Lehman Brothers called a "landmark quarter." "The results of this quarter suggest more than just the turnaround of PeopleSoft, but also the return to sustained growth," Lehman analyst Neil Herman wrote in a recent report. "PeopleSoft is gaining market share overall, particularly against SAP." On Tuesday, Lehman upgraded PeopleSoft shares from "outperform" to "buy." PeopleSoft's progress is attributed to its decision two years ago to re-architect the next version of its enterprise resource planning software, called PeopleSoft 8, to adopt more standard, Internet-based technology. Products from that $500 million effort are now moving to market. PeopleSoft MarketPay, scheduled for release in the first quarter of next year, is built to settle billing between companies doing business over the Internet, such as in trading exchanges. The software handles the procurement and payment ends of online transactions between businesses, and offers tight integration with PeopleSoft's backend financial modules. A multi-currency, multilingual, international version is in the making, but no release date has been set. MarketPay gives PeopleSoft the lead over competitors Oracle Corp. (stock: ORCL) and SAP AG (stock: SAP). The latter two companies have only announced plans for similar technology. In expanding its PeopleSoft MarketPlace exchange technology, the company is adding human resources management to the software, which handles buying and selling of office supplies and maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) goods. New components of MarketPlace will allow companies to use the Internet to manage large networks of independent contractors and provide employees with links to benefits providers and travel services. New capabilities for PeopleSoft 8 CRM will begin rolling out in December with the addition of analytical software and the ability to leverage wireless access protocol (WAP) to give sales representatives access to CRM data. Native integration to PeopleSoft 8 backend applications is also planned. In the first quarter of next year, the company will introduce a new integration framework, based on XML and Java, for transferring information between applications. In the second quarter of 2001, PeopleSoft will release an enterprise edition that includes a browser-based interface and encompasses all the components in one integrated package. PeopleSoft Supply Chain in a Box is a package of pre-assembled components that reduces the time of deployment to between six and 12 months. Similar supply chain packages can take more than a year to deploy, company officials said. Karen Smith, industry analyst for the Aberdeen Group, Boston, said PeopleSoft's product line has "a lot of promise going forward." "In general, companies are looking for someone to be able to address their specific pain points," Smith said. "We're seeing PeopleSoft deliver some of that functionality now."