This year marks the 10th anniversary of PeopleSoft's acquisition by Oracle and it's been two years since the release of PeopleSoft 9.2, likely to be the last version released. Many of the thousands of customers still running their human resources operations on this platform are wondering what to do next, especially as the move to the cloud gathers momentum. Let's look at where the PeopleSoft product line stands today and at customers' prospects.

Taking stock of Oracle PeopleSoft is a case of looking at the proverbial glass: half empty or half full? Proponents of the glass half-full will point out that a majority of PeopleSoft customers have not decamped and are still using the product. Observers of the glass half-empty will notice that every year since the acquisition has seen a steady erosion of the customer base, with Oracle losing many PeopleSoft customers but gaining almost none which, in the long run, will be bad for the software vendor.

Both camps are right, although I tend to think that the glass half-empty proponents are more right. Enterprise software is particularly sticky. Companies don't change their HR systems as fast or as often as consumers switch smartphones because the number of enterprise users are in the thousands, requirements are complex, implementation takes longer and costs are much higher. Therefore, expecting hundreds of large global companies to switch overnight to a new HR system was never realistic.

However, the fact that a majority of PeopleSoft customers have remained with Oracle is by no means an indication of their strong loyalty to that vendor. Their reasons are many: happiness with status quo, resistance to change, ignorance of alternatives. In 2015 the alternatives are becoming increasingly more viable, which should lead to many migration projects getting the go-ahead.