Nov 5th 1998: Leading US vendor Peoplesoft has announced a portal strategy which aims to have customers integrate its enterprise business process software into their Internet access and e-business activities. The plan is an almost perfect evocation of Netscape's vision for leading brands to become Enterprise Service Providers (ESPs) in the networked economy, and hits many fashionable Internet hot buttons. But a lack of firm detail leaves a suspicion that the announcement is more hype than substance.

Revealed at the Peoplesoft 1998 user conference in San Francisco, California on Monday (Nov 2nd), PSBN is a portal-style solution whose main aim is to allow companies to integrate internal and third-party content tailored to user requirements. It creates a single Web console where users can view critical business information from Peoplesoft applications alongside content from external product and services suppliers.

External content will be delivered within modules called e-Business Communities, an extension to Peoplesoft's core architecture designed to support Web-based self-service applications. The aim is for these modules to integrate and deliver content from e-business merchants, Peoplesoft's own enterprise applications and other sources, based on users' preferences and roles within an organisation. There will be separate communities for areas such as employee benefits, procurement, payroll, expense management and so on, as well as a facility for self-management of user profiles.

Peoplesoft will establish an e-business merchants program for integrating and delivering applications and content from what it calls a "growing base" of merchants which will include health insurance, delivery services, financial management, and Internet infrastructure companies, all of them electronically linked to PeopleSoft enterprise applications.

The first set of e-business Communities will be announced in early 1999, and delivered later in the year. Charter membership in the e-business Merchant program will begin in early 1999. Peoplesoft did not name any companies who will become members, or give any indication how much they will have to pay for the privelege; these details will become known in January, it says.

Visionary buzzwords

Overall, the PSBN concept maps out a vision that is sure to be a hit in the world of the wired. All the right buzzwords are there: it fits very clearly into the portal category; the community word has been used to full effect; and user personalisation is a big feature. Whether it is workable, and if it does, whether anyone will want to participate, is quite another question.

The biggest flaw in the plan is the assumption is that users will be happy to install the PSBN portal on their desktop and do all their e-business purchasing from Peoplesoft's nominated merchants. Such passive acceptance seems unlikely from a sophisticated business user base that is skewed in any case towards those whose workday mission is to control costs and get the best deal for their company.

It will only overcome such reservations if the ease and convenience of purchasing through PSBN outweighs any price disadvantage. This will depend on the level of integration Peoplesoft manages to achieve between the e-business communities and its core applications.

To this end, it announced it is building what it called an e-business backbone based on its ERP applications architecture. The backbone will use EDI, message agent technology and application programming interfaces to integrate its e-business solutions with the enterprise applications. Extensions such as PSBN and the e-business communities will plug extra functionality into the backbone.

There will also be sell-side extensions from partner vendors for functions such as Web order entry, Web bill presentment and online bill payment. Peoplesoft also committed to begin piloting "value chain" extensions in partnership with software vendors and service providers whose purpose would be to coordinate and manage supply and demand among trading partners.

Timed to coincide with the Peoplesoft announcements, Netscape launched a Peoplesoft-specific version of its application server together with PerLDAP, which automates extraction of directory data from Peoplesoft for use in Netscape's LDAP-compliant directory server. The two products together are designed to ease the task of extending core business processes and data out of an existing Peoplesoft system into an extranet environment.

Richer implementations

All of these technology developments will be welcomed by application services providers since it will give them the tools to provide a richer Peoplesoft implementation to customers. Certified outsourcing partners will be able to act as ASPs for e-business solutions as well as for enterprise applications. ASPs already certified by Peoplesoft include USinternetworking and Corio.

But they may feel that Peoplesoft, in its enthusiasm for maximum Internet hype, has missed a few tricks in its PSBN announcement. The portal will be an ideal environment in which to offer rentable applications, and adopting a subscription model for application services offered within the e-business communities would help to reduce its reliance on product sales as its main revenue stream. That would enhance the appeal to users, who would view it more as a set of service offerings than a collection of online shops.

ASPs will also be looking for details of how the PSBN portal can be customised and branded so that it does not clash or compete with other vendors' products and services which they supply to customers.

For the moment, however, Peoplesoft is not courting the software rental industry. Its executives have evidently spent a lot of time listening to Netscape, which must feel rather pleased with the whole tenor of the PSBN announcement. Netscape would have had to Peoplesoft-enable its enterprise systems lineup anyway, so it is not as if it has made any sacrifice to chime in with its partner. Peoplesoft, on the other hand, has now joined the vanguard of Netscape's ESP vision. It has definitely succeeded in making a strong statement about its intentions to be at the forefront of development in the Internet economy. It will find it a bigger challenge to follow the statement with equally successful actions.