PeopleSoft dropping XE Support

We recently received a letter from PeopleSoft telling us that support for XE was ending at the end of February 05. If we want to continue support for XE we have to commit to an upgrade date and pay an addtional 10% of our current maintenance fee to continue to get XE updates. We are in the middle of migrating from World to OneWorld XE and will not be finished until mid 2005.

They have a recorded webcast that attempts to explain the Supplemental Support arrangement. One of the first things they say is that they know there are a significant number of users still on XE. If this is true why are they dropping support.

Does anyone have any ideas how to find out the number of customers on the XE release?

I would also welcome any other opinions from users in a simular situation.

Since you are still in the migration/upgrade path what is keeping you from moving to 8.0 at this point. The upgrade from Xe to 8.0 is not that much of a bug deal, it would be much harder to upgrade once you have stabilized your system.

Cleo, The reason we cant go to 8.0 is because we are coexistent.

Although not a popular solution, you would have to split your environments apart and no longer be coexistant.

Another thing to point out is that when they say "dropping support" they mean that they will no longer be creating fixes for that version. They will still support the product up to the point where a code fix is required. So if you are having an issue getting services to start on your enterprise server, they would help you out. However, if you had a program such as P4310 that wasn't working correctly and needed a BSFN revamped, you are out of luck unless you do it in house.

I hope this helps!

Kmurphy,

The reason why PeopleSoft or any Software Vendor drops support is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Upgrading to a new release generates consulting dollars for them. It also helps lower their overhead by having less releases to support. We are an XE shop worldwide with several countries moving from world to one-world. We in IT would like to move to 8.10 but peoplesoft has yet to generate a strong enough business case to convince our upper managment to commit the millions of dollars it would take for us to do a major upgrade on six seperate XE instances supporting 13 countries. Our Executive Vice President is currently pushing back at the highest levels of PeopleSoft against a forced upgrade with little perceived business benefit.

Gregg Larkin
North American PeopleSoft
Enterprise One System Administrator
Praxair Inc.

Gregg,

Thanks for the reply. It sounds like we are in the same boat. Have you been able to determine how many customers are on XE. I was told by a PeopleSoft rep that there are 1600 customers still on XE. That seems to be a very significant number of customers. Certainly enough to continue supporting the version. Our issue is that we need coexistence until we are 100% implemented on OneWorld which wont be until mid 2005. Can you tell me via email who your managment is talking to at PeopleSoft? [email protected] Thanks,
Kevin