There was little new that was disclosed. Both companies pointed to various announcements over the past few months. They included IBM’s adding goodies like PHP and virtualization support in the base platform, plus the i520 Solution for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne (not World).
In turn, Oracle pointed to the year-end release of JD Edwards World A9.1, which is the first major refresh of the line in a number of years.
What was more important was the tone, complete with a client testimonial to drive the point home. The subtone was, who cares about whether these products are fashionable?
This relationship is truly unique, claimed IBM’s Mark Shearer, general manager of System I. By that, he was referring to the loyalty of JDE World customers, some of who are starting their third decade with the system. And he was referring to his buddy-buddy relationship with John Schiff, vice president and general manager of the JDE World business.
This is the deepest personal relationship in my engagement, said Shearer.
The love-in was the logical follow-on to Oracle president Charles Phillips’ disclosure of the company’s Applications Unlimited initiative last spring.
That was when Oracle promised it would continue supporting and updating JD Edwards, Oracle, PeopleSoft and Siebel applications indefinitely, and that it wouldn’t force anybody to migrate to Oracle’s future E-Business Suite or Fusion middleware. That announcement one-upped previous commitments to maintain JD Edwards products through 2013.
And it was a carbon copy of SSA Global’s 2004 commitment, before it too was acquired, that it would never sunset support of any of its large stable of acquired enterprise apps.
Given Oracle’s high profile rivalry with IBM in database and systems integration, the pairing of the more obscure parts of both companies constitutes one of the IT industry’s oddest couples.
But the rationale behind the reaffirmations was the fact that JD Edwards by far has the largest application installed base on the System i. And Oracle can’t afford to ignore the roughly 5,000-customer World installed base, the overwhelming majority of whom would rather pay maintenance than migrate.
In case you had any doubts, they trotted out the current head of the JDE World user group, Michael Caldwell, whose day job is vice president of information systems of LaSalle Bristol Corp, an Indiana manufacturer of modular homes.
Caldwell spoke of uncertainties prior to the PeopleSoft acquisition, when JD Edwards was pushing the World installed base to migrate to the client/server OneWorld (now EnterpriseOne). We dropped out of the [JD Edwards] Quest user group and even considered dropping maintenance, he said.
And he recalled the ups and downs of the successive PeopleSoft and Oracle acquisitions, the first of which he said was supposed to be the marriage made in heaven, and the second as the huge monster that would eat us up. Obviously, Caldwell felt vindicated when Oracle made the Applications Unlimited announcement.
Caldwell echoed what’s probably a common sentiment in the JDE World base when he that the low cost of ownership kept the company from migrating. With JDE World on System i (or whatever vintage they had), Caldwell estimated his company was spending barely a third of a percent of revenues on IT.
IBM’s Shearer said he’s heard that before from the System i base. They’re not particularly hung up on what operating system or processor underlies it, he said, admitting, One of the mistakes I have made in the past few years is putting too much emphasis on the technology.
