But that trend will reverse within five years, with only 20 percent of projects focused internally and 80 percent aimed outside corporate walls. Both companies have been struggling in recent quarters and faced renewed threats from larger competitors, most notably Oracle, which is aggressively integrating its ERP and CRM applications. PeopleSoft and Vantive already have begun the integration process. The companies' products integrate today via Vantive QuickConnect for PeopleSoft, a package built with the help of integrator KPMG and EAI vendor Active Software. The combined company will detail further product integration early next year.
Integration is an important thing to customers.
They want an integrated enterprise solution wrapped around the customer, said Baer Tierkel, PeopleSoft's senior vice president of business strategy and development. Companies want to begin an enterprise relationship with a customer, have it hit their financials, be managed by their employees and expose the entire supply chain. It had to custom-build interfaces between the two systems, and sees great advantage in a common data store across both products. But that won't happen without some effort. Companies would like to have an integrated front and back office that's all around the customer, said AMR Research analyst Rod Johnson.