Big Event, Big Announcement at PeopleSoft Connect 2004

Campus Technology samples Fall 2004 conferences.

Big Event, Big Announcement at PeopleSoft Connect 2004


Looking ahead or back?Speaking to a packed and overflowing hall, PeopleSoft’s then-CEO Craig Conway gave the September 21 keynote at Moscone Center in San Francisco. Nearly 15,000 attendees—many craning their necks to view remote monitors—heard the announcement: PeopleSoft will integrate IBM middleware and development tools. The combined efforts of an army of IBM infrastructure geeks and PeopleSoft applications developers will be marketed jointly.

How did higher education customers react? John Webster, PeopleSoft program director for Dakota State University (SD) who was at the show with a group of presenters from his university, commented: “PeopleSoft’s alliance with IBM may be viewed as the first step in the company’s work to put Oracle [takeover attempts] in the rearview mirror as it concentrates on developing the next generation of enterprise applications for its customers. And while some analysts remain cynical of the relationship, viewing a takeover as inevitable, I view it as a very strong and positive statement about both companies’ commitment to ‘their’ customers and the future.”
Since the conference, Conway was ousted—leaving the question as to just how far back in the rearview mirror a takeover might be.

partners



At the well-orchestrated Sept. 21 press event, PeopleSoft’s Craig Conway and IBM senior VP Steve Mills discuss the move to combine IBM’s WebSphere (an open standards-based middleware platform) with PeopleSoft apps.

The fledgling technology show...

...targets admissions and registration. For the second year, admissions officers and registrars heavily involved in technology implementations have their own conference. The 94-year-old American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO; www.aacrao.org), a mainstay in administrative computing circles, has spun off a conference that attracted 350-plus, October 3-5 in Newport Beach, CA. Attendees came to discuss their special interests in technology for student systems and services.

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