PeopleSoft Release Enables Integrated Analytics

PeopleSoft is gearing up customers for the release of its PeopleSoft Enterprise Warehouse 8.8. The solution, part of the AppConnect product suite, goes beyond the previous version, version 8.3, by providing organizations with prepackaged analytic content, a portal interface, and Web services capabilities that aim to reduce the cost and time of deploying, managing, and delivering enterprise analytics. "The packaged warehouse sector is one of the fastest growing areas in the business intelligence space," says Henry Morris, group vice president of application and information access at research firm IDC. "It's growing faster than the overall applications business. Right now is a big time for budgeting, planning, and forecasting, because of the economy and the Enron/WorldCom disasters. So you need to be certain about vouching for financials." The new release, which will be available on December 11, 2002, as a stand-alone component of the Enterprise Performance Management suite, can be used with PeopleSoft's Enterprise Portal. The Enterprise Warehouse consists of an operation data store for offline reporting, a data warehouse for hosting analytical applications, and predefined data marts of multidimensional analysis. The solution also includes more than 1,200 predefined business metrics that are delivered in portals, applications, or online analytical process tools. "PeopleSoft's Enterprise Warehouse automates the collection of data and facilitates one version of corporate truth, enabling our business units to use their time analyzing and understanding the data in contrast to just gathering it," Thomas Johansen, first vice president, IT at Danske Bank, said in a prepared statement. The PeopleSoft Enterprise Warehouse 8.8 includes extract, transform, and load tools for customers to consolidate data from any business application for real-time analysis. Integration has become a hot topic over the past year, and this solution is designed to integrate with homegrown or third-party legacy applications. "Providing an analytic framework that works with your PeopleSoft application and others is the value-add provided by the Enterprise Warehouse solution," says James Tucker, director of product marketing at PeopleSoft. Portal use also is gaining in popularity. Separately, PeopleSoft also announced today that the United States Navy selected its Human Capital Management (HCM) solution to consolidate more than 20 disparate human resources systems. The PeopleSoft HCM suite will provide the more than 380,000 sailors with access to personnel information and enable them to manage their careers online through a Web browser from their home, ship, or base. Sailors can view and modify personnel information like benefits, training, assignments, qualifications, and compensation. The application is designed to help senior leadership view real-time data on personnel skills sets, compensation, and competencies. The Navy will start the deployment of the HCM solution this month, and expects it to be fully functional in 2004.