Why Your PeopleSoft Migration to OCI Might Fail (And How to Prevent It)

At RECONNECT Dive Deep, Joe Finlinson from Astute Business Solutions shared his expertise on completing a successful migration to the Cloud. Astute Business Solutions is a full services advisory and managed services firm. They have a track record of 17 years in business, 15+ On-Premises projects, 55+ Cloud projects, and a striking 100% project success rate. The insights Joe provided in the presentation apply to organizations that choose to migrate on their own as well as those that hire an experienced partner to smooth the path to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

In this post, you’ll find insights regarding the following migration considerations:

• Unpacking the Pitfalls
• The Hidden Costs of Migration
• The Expertise Gap
• Prevention Strategies
• Key Takeaways

Unpacking the Pitfalls

There are a number of common pitfalls for Cloud migrators. These include data loss and integrity, misconfigured settings, underestimated complexity, inadequate testing, and lack of stakeholder communication.

A specific area of concern is data. If you have a lot of data, how do you migrate it to the Cloud? You may encounter challenges of volume, data integrity, security concerns, compatibility issues, and regulatory compliance. Oracle provides GoldenGate as a way to get data from your current database into OCI for free, but there is still work to be done and areas to be examined.

Some of the issues organizations face during migration are Cloud-specific. While running on the Cloud is easier than running On-Premises, there are unique configuration nuances, integration issues, resource management, service limitations, and cost management considerations to take into account.

It’s also important to note that not all Clouds are created equal. Google, Azure, AWS, and Oracle give their networks different names. Each of these Cloud providers have taken their own distinct approach to building a Cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure was built from the ground up as an enterprise Cloud. They were built to be enterprise-friendly and to support security first as an implementation guideline. Other Clouds may not do the same. Configuration nuances and best practices will differ between Cloud providers and On-Premises. You’ll want to understand these differences to avoid issues down the road.

The Hidden Costs of Migration

One of the major benefits of migrating to OCI is the prospect of cost savings. However, those savings have been oversimplified in some cases. Cloud migration does not lead to savings out-of-the-box. You’ll have to engineer that savings. It may come from right-sizing systems, better utilizing resources, or allocating staff differently. There are savings to be had, but you must keep track of it throughout the project.

One example of a cost you may not anticipate regards security. While the Cloud can be more secure than what you’re running On-Premises, the associated cost of security may be more expensive due to those extra security tools.

Consider unforeseen expenses, budget overruns, operations costs post-migration, and the cost of downtime as you look at the budget for your migration. By doing so, you’ll position yourself for real cost savings instead of oversimplified, fictional savings that are sure to disappoint at project’s end.

The Expertise Gap

For professionals who have experience with AWS or Azure, but not Oracle, a move to OCI means uncharted territory. This uncharted territory can lead to misconfigurations and painstakingly reinventing the wheel when Oracle has already delivered what you need. The easy way around this is to invest in your people by providing the training and upskilling necessary to close the gap so your team has the right expertise. This will be an added cost, but it will protect you from potential pitfalls. Another approach is to bring in a consulting expert—even as part of your permanent team—so that you’re not trying to cover new territory by yourself.

Prevention Strategies

The first prevention strategy for your organization comes down to planning. You need a strategic vision that permeates the entire project team from top to bottom. Ideally, it would include your entire organization so that everyone is on board with where you’re going and how you’ll get there. Take a comprehensive assessment of your organization—auditing your customizations, complexities, and challenges. Your environment must be stable before moving it to the Cloud.

Another planning directive is to safeguard your data by setting up and testing back-ups on both On-Premises and in the Cloud in case you need to restore anything. Take a phased approach to your strategy and plan for feedback loops throughout the project. Important questions to ask your team and any partners you work with are below:

• How are we doing?
• What’s going well?
• What’s not going well?

Another prevention technique is to invest in training and expertise. If you’re moving to the Cloud, you need to upscale your team. An alternative to this is to look at managed services. Even if you take that route, your team needs to understand what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. Prioritize learning through skill enhancement, hands-on workshops, certification programs, collaboration with specialists, and knowledge sharing.

Another prevention protocol is continuous monitoring. You need to be able to monitor during the project and after the project has occurred. If you can’t see what’s going on in your environment, then you can’t take care of it.

Take advantage of monitoring tools, real-time alerts, and performance tuning. By doing so, you’ll reach proactive issue resolutions for your organization.

What Does a Successful Migration Look Like?

TriNet is a professional employment organization. They administer the HR side of the world for small businesses that can outsource HR. TriNet serves around 30,000 customers, which means running 30,000 payrolls through PeopleSoft.

Astute and Oracle worked together to help TriNet select OCI over AWS in a bid to completely move out of their on-premises data centers.

TriNet spent three months of almost daily meetings talking about every application, piece of infrastructure, security, service levels, etc. At the end of the three months, they had a very detailed project plan, broken up into phases.

Astute helped TriNet by affirming that they could accomplish the move in nine months, sharing their unique expertise for doing so in a successful manner. TriNet’s migration included

• 1,500 servers
• 100 databases
• 100 applications, including TriNet’s SaaS platform backed by PeopleSoft
• Inter-region HA, with cross-region DR
• 750 OpenStack VMs
• 50 Kubernetes nodes
• Over 200 TB in data transfer
• 550 VMWare to OCVS

Completing this level of migration in only nine months is a remarkable feat.

TriNet was able to achieve this because they received top-down commitment starting at the board of directors. They communicated the strategic initiative with their teams to get organization-wide buy-in. TriNet was committed to excellence for their customers and their organization. They also had strong project governance with a structure that covered all levels of the project. Detailed planning, expertise retention where needed, and staff training were all critical factors that contributed to TriNet’s impressive success.

In short, TriNet created a detailed plan and aligned the team to make it happen. That’s what leads to a successful migration.

Key Takeaways

Most importantly, leverage the expertise of others for your migration. If you’re confident that your organization can make the migration alone, bring in a partner like Astute to help you build out a project plan that you can execute on your own. Considering your core competency is PeopleSoft, the most realistic tactic for success is to partner with a consultant that specializes in moving PeopleSoft to the Cloud. Then, you’ll leverage your expertise to maintain PeopleSoft on the Cloud.

A breakdown by pitfall and prevention tactic is listed in the table below:

For more information, you can view the entire RECONNECT session recording here: Why Your PeopleSoft Migration to OCI Might Fail (And How to Prevent It).