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By Robert Fox, Engagement Manager
This past week, BTRG sponsored and presented at the LINK 09 conference in Dallas, TX. The timing of the key note address, given by John Webb, Oracle VP of PeopleSoft Enterprise Strategy - was perfect. Webb had the pleasure of announcing to the LINK 09 users that PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain 9.1 were released this past Friday, with EPM to follow soon. LINK 09 was the first conference where all Oracle presenters no longer had to qualify their statements with 'in the upcoming release.' Here are some of the highlights from the conference:

Oracle's view of the PeopleSoft market was very positive (are you surprised?), with 250+ new customers in the last fiscal year. Much of the demand was driven by the public sector - presumably an effective of stimulus money hitting the economy. Oracle also announced that PeopleSoft Enterprise had 12 quarters of positive growth.

Some of the factoids presented on the Financials and Supply Chain 9.1 release include:

Oracle was very enthused by the new web 2.0 features that (finally) make PeopleSoft look more like a web application and less like old screens dragged into a web GUI. Features like partial page refreshes, grid pop-outs and predictive-text searching were long overdue. While I think Oracle would have been better off blowing the entire GUI up and starting from scratch these additions are going to be much appreciated. Some of these features will be available if you upgrade to the new tools release.

A lot was said about new Related Content windows that enable pages in PeopleSoft to link in other related information. This information could be from other PeopleSoft pages, Intranet content, or external content. When linked to some of the BI apps this feature was another good addition.

The Oracle marketing strategy is to focus on three areas that 9.1 is said to assist companies; Increased Productivity, Accelerated Business Performance and Lower Total Cost of Ownership.

For financials users there was some good news in that Oracle seems to be making some true progress on enhancing the close process. New automated accruals that tie into AP and EX will help. New logic for allocations and incremental consolidations will also make the process easier. Don't delete your spreadsheets yet - there are still a lot of gaps but these new tools should make a positive impact on the overall close time.

Supply Chain and Financial users rejoice - AWE workflow is now coming to you. The AWE is the workflow engine that drives eProcurement - and it is a much superior workflow than what is available for PO and GL users today. While you can still keep your heavily customized roles, rules and routings (if you really want to) the AWE will probably do most of what you have today with no customization.

If past precedence holds true the upgrade scripts should be available in 10 - 14 weeks. The recognized upgrade jumps will be from 8.8, 8.9 and 9.0.

One area in Supply Chain that surprisingly did not get a lot of attention was that PeopleSoft users now have access to connect to the Oracle Supplier Network (OSN) and Oracle Exchange (OEx). These applications are commonly used by the Oracle iBusiness Suite and are new for PeopleSoft customers. This is a significant step in enabling PeopleSoft customers to connect to a supplier marketplace and a transaction delivery hub at low cost. Access to the OSN is free, for now...

Some of the smaller highlights include enhancements to change assistant, a hosted option for PeopleBooks, a new iPhone application for Expenses and the inclusion of business process maps into the PeopleBooks documentation. If you have comments or would like more information, please contact me at rfox@btrgroup.com. If you're interested in learning how to upgrade to 9.1 quickly and cost-effectively contact us at nofrills@btrgroup.com.