SuperNav –
dude, you knock on Oracle? You must have had some true uneducated, untrained losers for DBA’s. Oracle is like Unix, if you don’t set it up properly and don’t know how to use it – it sucks.
Lestat-
I’m surprised that your company isn’t even considering SAP the industry leader in ERP programs.
Oracle Financials, People soft and SAP can run off of an Oracle database. Oracle as a database can NOT be beaten. Get competent TRAINED people for your DBA’s and MS SQL Server will be still be loading up when a mass update in Oracle has finished and had time to execute a 30+ table multiple outer-join select. Now if your database has less than a million records you could use SQL Server or MS Access to do the job, that or a pencil and eraser and it would be done at the same time.
Customization with PeopleSoft is a necessity, when/if you upgrade DO NOT use the PeopleSoft upgrade lab. They have a huge problem with highly customized apps and only give you a short time to tell them how to handle it, if you don’t tell them what to do they decide for you.
As with any ERP there are pros and cons to each. PeopleSoft’s version 8+ is entirely online and is currently adding instant messaging to it’s toolbox, not to mention full self service and the advantages of being a fully web based front end (ver 8). The arguments between server side and client side is making a roundabout again.
The problem for your company is that there is NO direct migration path from version 7 (which sucks really, really bad by the way) to version 8+. You are going to pay. But will that expense be more than a full implementation of Oracle Financials?
This is all moot depending on what Ellison does next on his bid to buy peoplesoft. If successful then anyone running it against DB2 or SQL Server is in for a BIG surprise.
As for your conferences Oracle likes to hold them in Hawaii and PeopleSoft moves them around, so if you get to go then… easy choice