peoplesoft

end of q4 to move all enterprise apleication s to linux

David Sayed, PeopleTools Technology

we've supported lin in various forms for the past 4 years, mainly on the web server, and also on the client. We're a peer architecture, works on a browser. Waht we've heard is tha the trend is from tinkering in the back room to deployh file and p;rint on the edge and then earlier this year for mission critical apps. CRM, supply chain, human captial management (HR), financials. The name of the companyh indicates that. We have significant presence in the ERP. (ent res pl).

we've aloways been cross platform. we support everything from NT to mainframes, including LInux. A way to offer customer choice. leverage the economic benefits of linux. standardizaton on equopment, skill set. We can support them in whatever their environment.

some manufacturing, some health care, some services. It's from different areas.

we;re very dfiven by customer demand. we don't just do cool technology. we sell business value. Not what platform it runs on. So it really has been "we want to run this on linux." the announcement we made withy IBM in may was for IBM xSeries (intel) hardware, DB2 and WebSphere as the web server. We QA on that. We're rolling it out on Red Hat, which is where we see the demand right now.

the quyestion is, are distros different platforms or not? That's the question from a support standpoint.

Since we'rve partneree d with IBM we've looked to them for advice. That's why we settled on Red Hat. We are committed to being cross-platform, so we won't make any changes specific to one platform.

it be3comes a support qustion. Our customers want Red Hat and SuSE. the abilitity to interface with a company that can proviede support is an important issue. YOu need a robust support infrastructure. if a customer is depoloyhing on AIX, we'll assume they have a support agtreement with IBm for that,. So we'd expect the same for alinux distribution. It'll be interesting to seehow the support issue evolves. Will third parties appear? I don't know.

red hat certification is critical for the market.if yoiu r database has your accouting information , or your payroll, if there are any OS related issues, you need a throat to choike. Simple as that. even down at the sysadmin level, there might be plenty of help available form the Net. But at the CIO level, it's impor4tant to have the real support agreements. just like we provide for customers. That's what we've been waiting for. we think the necessary agreemtns are there. the stab and perf of tghe kernel, of the ditros, the technology,,....the support infrastructure. just because someobody spends less on the OS doesnpt mean they should have less fromtheir applicaitojs. They want the same functionality.