PST set to reap big rewards

Herbert Schoenek, managing director of PST.

As competitors zero in on former JD Edwards customers caught up in the Oracle takeover of PeopleSoft, Auckland-based business intelligence specialist PST Software looks set to win big.

PST makes a business intelligence solution, Q4bis, many of whose customers use JDE's Enterprise World product which runs on IBM iSeries AS/400 servers.

Because Oracle is seen as having little interest in supporting the iSeries platform, competitors are targeting the World user base.

Microsoft is offering PeopleSoft customers a 25 per cent discount on licence and maintenance fees if they switch to its products.

According to PST managing director Herbert Schoenek, that means more business for PST, not less, because it can take part in the migration process as well as sell to firms that stick with World.

Q4bis includes tools to suck data out of an ERP production database - in the case of the iSeries that means DB/2 or DB/400 - and load it on a Microsoft SQL Server database, from where it can be analysed by business executives with easy-to-use tools.

That data extraction technology has been picked up by a United States systems implementer, Iteration2, as the basis for a toolkit to migrate JD Edwards users to Microsoft Business Systems Axapta product.

Schoenek said Iteration2 would sell Imat (Iteration2 Migration Adaption Tool) to other Microsoft systems integrators around the world.

As well as the indirect sale of its technology, PST gets access to a larger number of potential customers.

"When customers see our complete solution, there is a high likelihood we can get further sales," Schoenek said. Iteration2 is the master distributor for Q4bis in North America. It has headquarters in Irvine, California, where PST established its North American office.

Schoenek met its chief executive, Mike Gilles, at a JD Edwards Quest Global user group conference last year.

"We saw we had common strategies and were offering solutions to all ERP customers," he said.

A key selling point for Q4bis is that it is simple enough to be used by managers, not just highly trained analysts.

"CEOs and managers are now more computer literate and they don't want to wait days and weeks for information; they want it a mouse-click away," Schoenek said.

He said PST, which had 25 staff in offices in New Zealand, Europe and the US, was aiming for $14 million revenue from North America this year, $3.6 million from Europe and $2.5 million from New Zealand and Australia, representing 200 per cent growth.