It would be a reasonable assumption that having acquired a website called ‘davesnextmove.com', and having gone as far as populating the site with content, finding out what PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield is up to next should be easy.

It would be a much mistaken assumption.

What is known is that that Duffield has "teamed up with some of the brightest minds in the industry to create the next generation of applications to meet the demands of today's extended enterprise". Visitors are even promised that the new venture will "tackle the traditional ERP market in a non-traditional way".

The web site certainly raises more questions than it answers, hinting at the use of an open-source, service-oriented architecture. "We are directing everyone to the website for now, which we all realise is incredibly vague – but this is intentional," says the press officer.

Speaking at The International Association for Human Resource Information conference held in Reno Nevada during May 2005, Duffield did reveal: "We don't have a name yet, but we do have a time horizon: a hypothetical date."

Behind the thinking is the view that today's enterprise applications apparently no longer meet the needs of their customers, are too expensive and ignore the needs of the line manager.

Much of what is being promised sounds akin to the work already well underway at ERP leader SAP. But there is an opportunity to forge ERP applications closely tied to IBM's WebSphere.

Duffield has a history of making waves – and while he's starting again from a low base, he should not be discounted.