PeopleSoft: История поглощения и трансформация корпорации

Defunct American corporation

PeopleSoft, Inc. was a company that provides human resource management systems (HRMS), financial management solutions (FMS), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), and enterprise performance management (EPM) software, as well as software for manufacturing, and student administration to large corporations, governments, and organizations. It existed as an independent corporation until its acquisition by Oracle Corporation in 2005. The PeopleSoft name and product line are now marketed by Oracle. PeopleSoft Financial Management Solutions (FMS) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) are part of the same package, commonly known as Financials and Supply Chain Management (FSCM). PeopleSoft Campus Solutions (CS) is a separate package developed as a student information system for colleges and universities.

Beginning in 2003, Oracle began to maneuver for control of the PeopleSoft company. In June 2003, Oracle made a $13 billion bid in a hostile corporate takeover attempt. In February 2004, Oracle decreased their bid to approximately $9.4 billion; this offer was also rejected by PeopleSoft's board of directors. Complicating Oracle's takeover attempt was PeopleSoft's poison pill, allowing their customers to potentially receive refunds of 2–5 times the amount they had paid in the case of a takeover. Later that month, the U. S. Department of Justice filed suit to block Oracle, on the grounds that the acquisition would break antitrust laws. In September 2004, the suit was rejected by a U. S. Federal judge, who found that the Justice Department had not proven its antitrust case. In October, the same decision was handed down by the European Commission. Although Oracle had reduced its offer to $7.7 billion in May, it again raised its bid in November to $9.4 billion. In December 2004, Oracle announced that it had signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire PeopleSoft for approximately $10.3 billion. A month after the acquisition of PeopleSoft, Oracle cut over half of PeopleSoft's workforce, laying off 6,000 of PeopleSoft's 11,000 employees. Oracle moved to capitalize on the perceived strong brand loyalty within the JD Edwards user community by rebranding former JD Edwards products. Thus PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne became JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and PeopleSoft World became JD Edwards World. Oracle announced in 2005 that Fusion Applications would combine the best aspects of the PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Oracle Applications and merge them into a new product suite. Oracle would later slow the release cadence for PeopleSoft applications, instead releasing "Feature Packs" to add functionality.

Under Oracle, PeopleSoft offers different cloud based software products, including Human Capital Management (HCM), Campus Solutions, Procurement and Supplier Management, Financial Management, and PeopleTools and Technology. In 2010, PeopleSoft released its In Memory Project Discovery. It translated unstructured data into structured data, which then allowed users to analyze keywords and data in the Services Automation suite. It ran on Oracle's Exalytics in memory machine and Oracle Endeca Information Discovery enterprise data platform.

The original architecture for the PeopleSoft is a suite of products built on a client–server (two tier) approach with a dedicated client. Originally, a small number of security and system setup functions still needed to be performed on a fat client machine; however, this is no longer the case. The PeopleSoft application suite can function as an ERP system, similar to SAP, but can also be used for single modules; for example, Student Administration or HCM (Human Capital Management) alone. PeopleSoft uses a functionality now known as Integration Broker to communicate with different modules (known as pillars). In addition Integration Broker can be utilized for web services calls between PeopleSoft and other applications.

Implementation focuses on PeopleSoft's proprietary PeopleTools technology. PeopleTools includes many different components used to create web based applications: a scripting language known as PeopleCode, design tools to define various types of metadata, standard security structure, batch processing tools, and the ability to interface with a SQL database. The metadata describes data for user interfaces, tables, messages, security, navigation, portals, etc. This set of tools can make the PeopleSoft suite platform independent.

Before PIA version 8.0, Components were called Panel Groups.

PeopleSoft applications, which address complex business requirements, have some known issues in terms of online security. PeopleSoft was used by Fortune 500 companies and government organizations, and almost 50% of them are vulnerable and can be hacked via the internet, as researchers state. The risk factor lies in existing vulnerabilities of Oracle PeopleSoft systems that could enable data breaches at businesses, government organizations, and universities. Because of this, companies using PeopleSoft applications are under constant threat of cyber attacks. According to the research on public facing Oracle PeopleSoft applications and their vulnerabilities, systems available online are susceptible to the TokenChpoken attack. A TokenChpoken attack, which affects systems that use Single Sign On (SSO), is possible because an authentication cookie (PS TOKEN) used by PeopleSoft applications can be forged. When the PS TOKEN is identified by a "brute force" TokenChpoken attack, it is possible to log in under a system account and gain access to all data from the compromised system. Since 2010, several cases have been reported of PeopleSoft security breaches. In March 2013, Salem State University in Massachusetts alerted 25,000 students and employees that their Social Security Numbers might have been compromised in a database breach. Similarly, in February 2016, the University of Central Florida disclosed that over 63,000 student Social Security numbers had been compromised. All organizations that use PeopleSoft (including companies specialized in charity, food, manufacturing, retail, transport, etc.) stay vulnerable to TokenChpoken and other interventions if they do not pay due attention to security.