During Quest Forum Digital Event: PeopleSoft Week, PeopleTools Product Strategy’s Mark Hoernemann and David Bain introduced viewers to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), PeopleSoft Cloud Manager, lifecycle processes, and customization repository.

The Value of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)

PeopleSoft customers receive unique benefits with OCI. One of those benefits is end-to-end cloud infrastructure SLAs. Oracle covers availability, performance, and manageability for its customers. This is unique to OCI, as competitors including AWS, Azure, and GCP do not provide these SLAs. Additionally, many customers are choosing OCI because of cost savings. Compared to AWS, Oracle costs 34 percent less for computing, 97 percent less for block storage per month, and 99 percent less for network per month. With AMD pricing, OCI customers can achieve even greater savings.

In addition to cost savings, OCI performs better than other data centers. When compared to AWS, Oracle offers 45 percent more for compute, 14 percent more for memory, 525 percent more for block storage, and 100 percent more for network.

PeopleSoft Cloud Manager Overview

PeopleSoft Cloud Manager is the latest, free PeopleSoft application that runs on Oracle Cloud. It’s an automated “lift and shift” process to move to Oracle Cloud and enables self-service provisioning.

Users love PeopleSoft Cloud Manager because of the template-based provisioning and automatic network provisioning with VCN, subnets, and firewalls. A resource manager provides easy install for non-tech users, secures user credentials, and offers nested compartments and regional subnets.

In regard to automation, PeopleSoft Cloud Manager offers one-click PeopleTools 8.58 upgrades, and users can import PeopleSoft environments into Cloud Manager. Environment cloning and Kibana support are also included. Additionally, an improved TCO offers automated updates for releases and patches, application maintenance downloads through subscription channels, and dynamic/elastic download repository with FSS, making it easy to keep your system current.

More and more people are migrating away from data centers because of the advantages of the cloud. Cloud Manager is only available on OCI, so running PeopleSoft on other clouds requires manual work.

Lifecycle Management Processes in the Cloud

When you’re shifting to the cloud, you don’t have to jump in the deep end immediately. However, most customers are shifting their entire PeopleSoft footprint to the cloud.

When a PeopleSoft partner compared the PeopleSoft Cloud Manager automated lift and shift with the traditional manual process, the automated option required 285 minutes, and the manual process required 395 minutes. Cost-wise, the estimated savings were $15,000. (Cost savings are calculated based on a median on-premise installation that has 8-10 environments and managed using internal resources with an average daily rate of $500.)

With subscription services, PeopleSoft Cloud Manager offers a repository where you manage subscriptions to application and PeopleTools maintenance for PUM images, App PRP, PeopleTools patches, and PeopleTools versions. As soon as these new tools are available, you get access to them.

Based on timings recorded by a PeopleSoft partner, automated life cycle management using Cloud Manager can save up to 60% compared to traditional methods:

• Estimated effort savings of using Cloud Manager = 36 FTE Days/Year
• Estimated cost savings of using Cloud Manager = $18,000/year

Cost savings are calculated based on a median on-premises installation that has 8-10 employees using internal resources with an average daily rate of $500.

PUM images, Tools maintenance, and Cloud Manager maintenance are the direct lifecycle management cases. In addition to these cases, PeopleSoft users may want to use Topology, which can be stored and reused, or an Environment Template, which is a PeopleSoft application with a Topology. Once defined, it’s easy to get the PeopleSoft environment deployed.

There are additional system administrative capabilities with start/stop instances and cloning backup environments that enable cost savings through reduced load and infrastructure. In a PeopleSoft partner’s summary of cost savings for use of Cloud Manager’s capabilities, they identified up to a 30 percent reduction in infrastructure and labor costs.

Customization Repository

All PUM Images have a Customization Repository that is used to identify objects that have been customized in the target environment. Managing customizations can identify conflicts in the change package definition process and help you take action on conflicts prior to the compare process.

Overall, Cloud Manager offers PeopleSoft customers ease of use, automation, improved TCO, and database flexibility.