Peoplesoft has appointed Tripoint Online as its exclusive ASP partner to deliver the vendor's new direct channel ASP solution, servicing the Asia-Pacific region from a Sydney data centre.
Peoplesoft's ASP offering, named eCentre, will begin offering financial software such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Payroll systems, and will eventually offer customer relationship management (CRM) and supply-chain automation software via a PeopleSoft-branded, but Tripoint Online managed, service.
Tripoint Online will be transparent to the end user, who will be approached through the PeopleSoft sales force and call PeopleSoft for support. Subsequently, it will be the vendor rather than the end user that pays Tripoint Online, which will offer a service-level agreement to Peoplesoft rather than the end user. In essence, the deal enables Tripoint to concentrate on managing the boxes and the applications and leaves the sales, marketing and support functions to the vendor.
Tripoint Online has been operating for three years, establishing itself as a provider of technical consulting and design for implementing ERP systems, before concentrating on the Peoplesoft suite and outsourcing via the ASP model. General manager Michael Alp said the company won the eCentre contract over five major telco-related service providers.
Alp said part of the reason for the appointment was Tripoint Online's ability to make customisations to the software to suit the varying needs of customers. He claims it is rigidity, rather than complexity, that keeps organisations from outsourcing large software applications like ERP over a network.
"What Oracle has offered, for example, is totally 'vanilla'," he said. "You can't make any customisations, as their ASP model doesn't allow you to do that. But PeopleSoft opted to cater for customisation, and our flexibility was an important reason behind being chosen over our competitors."
