Oracle

I was working for Peoplesoft when Oracle acquired them and merged them into the applications division. I continued my work as a pre-sales engineer as I learned also the Oracle EBS platform and toolset. I worked on many opportunities where the question at hand was Oracle EBS or Peoplesoft solution. Both were great platforms. Oracle was better at ERP and Peoplesoft was better at CRM and Order management and commerce functions especially when it came to the customer facing and support applications. Oracle has  a great toolset that allows easy configuration of the UI, but Peoplesofts UI was more intuitive out of the box, just a little harder to tweek. Peoplesoft set the standard on customer UI and the customers loved it and wanted to keep it and were up in arms during the Oracle take over.

Oracle later realizing the value of the Peoplesoft customer base as an ongoing entity and the propensity for them to continue paying maintenance, quickly offered the "Apps Unlimited" program that promises to service, support, and upgrade peoplesoft applications. Big talk by Oracle was the Fusion applications and moving Peoplesoft and Peoplesofts acquisition of JD Edwards to the Fusion Platform. This is most certainly underway but a long term goal. In the meantime, we have "Apps Unlimited" support for Peoplesoft and JD Edwards customers both have strong loyal customers for a great product.

I found myself being a jack of all trades coming from JD Edwards and Peoplesoft and then to Oracle and Siebel. I was trained through the transition on all platforms and proficient at configuring demonstrations on all platforms. These became valuable in the sales process to determine best fit of the large bag of solutions on greenfield accounts.  I spent most my time in the Peoplesoft platform as it seemed most the activity was there for revenue opportunity in the NASA organization. Oracle could not sell EBS to them and customers would not budge. So we talked about EBS, but presented PSFT solutions in the end to win the deal. Most customers just wanted an upgrade and not a new platform. Also the strong HR background in most companies would win over the build vs. buy question. They flat liked the PSFT applications. We pushed Oracle EBS on greenfield accounts or when competing with SAP.

When Oracle acquired Siebel, another big paradigm shift was attempted by Oracle to push everyone to Siebel as the "Platform of choice" for CRM and Off I went to Seibel training for another platform. I kept getting pulled back into Peoplesoft deals and Oracle EBS Mfg Deals and constantly comparing Oracle, Siebel, and Peoplesoft in opportunities. This became a way of life until I opted to work on the eBilling team that was making great headway as an overlay product across all verticles and applications. It was agreat platform that was agnositc from a data source perspective that allowed it to extract data from any enterprise system, Oracle, Siebel, Peoplesoft, or SAP for that matter. It was scalabel and customers were looking for a quick win to lower TCO and reduce print costs of invoice and statment mail out. It was a true win-win for customers and Oracle into the Telco, Utilities, and Hi-Tech space where mass invoicing and billing were sucking up millions of dollars in handling and print costs as the new "GREEN" push to reduce paper was on full scale and we pushed it to the max. My core time at Oracle was spent on the EBS platform in MFG and peoplesoft for CRM.

In January of 2009, along with many other Hi-Tech software firms facing a tough economy and sales projections were not matching budgets, sales forces were reduced to meet the on coming reduction in projected sales. I found my self in a Siebel world with many Siebel vetrans of 7+ years against my 2 yrs of Siebel experience mixed with Oracle and Peoplesoft just did not hold up against the well experienced and tenured team of peers. It was tough walking away from Oracle, but times are changing and I do really think that SaaS is going to further hurt the big software companies if the don't make the shift. Oracle On-Demand is too little to late and does not offer enough Multi-tennant solutions outside of Siebel SFA. It is still single instance software that requires more licenesing and overhead to maintain the the many good SaaS solutions coming to market. Oracle does not offer EBS in SaaS, only single instance hosted on-demand.

I enjoyed a great 7 year tenure at Oracle in sales and have excelled on every platform thrown my way. I have the ability to create realationships from my varied experience and able to strike up a conversation on any level from the C-level to the shop floor level. I do what I have to, to earn the sale and a win-win deal.