PeopleSoft Users Weigh DB2 Options

IBM has good reason to be concerned. Oracle vies with SAP as the leading vendor for enterprise applications, but it's under pressure to show concrete benefits from the merger by combining assets and pumping up revenue. One obvious tactic will be to use the PeopleSoft applications to steer enterprise customers toward the Oracle database by optimizing performance and features toward the Oracle back end.

PeopleSoft users should formulate a contingency plan in case Oracle decides to make PeopleSoft products more dependent on its own databases--either through a formal plan or benign neglect. The costs of moving from DB2 to Oracle--or, worse, from PeopleSoft to SAP--could be daunting. But the costs of being blindsided and forced into a hasty migration would be worse.