PEOPLESOFT'S HARD GUY

摘要

The rise and fall and rise again of enterprise software maker PeopleSoft Inc. is a tale of two personalities.rnOn one hand, there's David A. Duf-field, the founder and chief executive for 11 years. He built a friendly culture for employees and customers alike. At airy offices in the San Francisco suburb of Pleasanton, the Mr. Rogers-style Duffield wore comfy sweaters, signed e-mail with his initials, DAD, and supported a rock band made up of employees—the Raving Daves. Out in the marketplace, the company let customers vote on features they wanted to see in the next batch of products. Duffield led PeopleSoft up a growth ramp that made it a darling of Wall Street—only to see it crash to earth in 1999. That's when the market for giant corporate software packages that handled everything from employee benefits to tracking inventory slipped into the doldrums.