The State of Oklahoma’s Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES) is on a path to update its PeopleSoft Financial software to a current PUM while utilizing out of the box features wherever possible. The current environment is a heavily customized, early PUM image of PeopleSoft 9.2. The customizations and infrastructure needs have hindered updates in the past.

However, by understanding the advantages of running PeopleSoft in the Cloud by utilizing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), and with a sharp focus on using standard and configurable features, OMES is now on a path to not only update PeopleSoft but also to be in a position to fully utilize all that PeopleSoft has to offer today and well into the future.

During Quest Forum Digital Event: PeopleSoft Week, Ayana Wilkins (Oracle Manager at OMES) joined Craig Oliver (Client Executive at Oracle), Jerry Adams (Enterprise Cloud Architect at Oracle), and Rob Mowid (Regional Director at MIPRO), for a discussion about the plan for OMES to run PeopleSoft on OCI.

About the State of Oklahoma

If you go back to the start of this journey, the State of Oklahoma has looked like many of today’s PeopleSoft customers. They have PeopleSoft installed in their own environment. They’ve got it set up on their systems, and they manage everything themselves—day-to-day incidents, operations, changes, updates, patches, capacity management, database tuning, storage and system capacity, backup plans, etc. Add all of that on top of their regular day-to-day work of running a state government! Running an older, customized system made it difficult to take on this heavy workload, and the State of Oklahoma knew that it was time to make a change.

Driving Factors Behind Making a Change

One of the main considerations was that the state as a whole relies primarily on OMES for technical support for both hardware and software. Organizationally, the State of Oklahoma has personnel with deep knowledge, but it does not have depth of skills across all teams. Sometimes, the OMES department is not able to respond as quickly as they should.

In addition, legacy systems in the state agencies were filled with duplicate entries, which was a waste of effort by several teams. OMES knew that they wanted to find a way to streamline processes and become more effective, especially when it came to providing services to the citizens of Oklahoma.

However, a lot of the software wasn’t compatible and caused issues with vendors who were unable to provide support because of the incompatibility. OMES knew that it did not want to add to its technical debt and wanted to decrease it as much as possible.

The software and hardware at the State of Oklahoma are composed of disparate software and multiple versions of the same software that are not compatible with one another. In addition, both hardware and software have components that are no longer supported by the vendors.

The State of Oklahoma was running PeopleSoft 9.2 PUM 5, which was implemented in 2014. OMES knew that they needed to ensure that its system had proper functionality in order to provide services to citizens in a timely manner.

Migrating PeopleSoft Financials to OCI

OMES knew that when they made the decision to move to cloud, they needed to update from PUM 5 because Oracle had introduced a lot of new functionality since then. This prompted OMES to identify how they planned to move and improve their system.

With the help of expert migration assistance and automation migration tools, OMES was confident that they could move PeopleSoft to OCI without re-architecture. They also knew that they could improve their PeopleSoft system by running it on OCI to take advantage of superior performance, a fast, resilient, full-features Oracle Database, rapid provisioning, and scalable capacity. The State of Oklahoma is provisioned on Exadata Cloud Service for its database platform.

In order for OMES to adopt new technology, they needed to:

• Clearly delineate business requirements
• Choose the technology that best matched requirements
• Determine gaps in technology’s fit versus current business processes
• Where there is a gap, the options were:
  • Eliminate the process if it’s not necessary
  • Adapt the process to fit the technology “out of the box”
  • Identify a technology configuration option to accommodate the process
  • As a last resort, customize the technology to accommodate the process

Project Governance Model

OMES also implemented a new governance structure that aligned with this project. They identified two levels of governance:

1. Business/technical owners, super users, project/executive managers
2. Executives

The first level of governance that was made up of business/technical owners, super users, project/executive managers look at customizations, along with Oracle, to determine what could be eliminated, what could be replaced with out-of-the-box functionality, what could be configured, and what the technical debt of the decision would be. This process looked at every single one of the 400+ customizations that the State of Oklahoma had.

The second level of governance that was made up of executives served as the final decision-makers. Based on technical debt and Oracle recommendations, executives were able to decide what could be eliminated from the current system. OMES did get rid of a large portion of customizations throughout this process.

The cadence of this process was once or twice a month. Nothing went to the second level of governance without first being looked at by the first level of users. During these multi-layer meetings, the team looked at both business and technical scope before sending it on to the executive team. The team looked at new technology, a well-rounded view of how customizations affected all state agencies, budget, etc.

This process provided transparency to implementation partners. Oracle was a part of the governance body, and so were vendors who were implementing new modules or functionality in PeopleSoft. These vendors can speak to their experience on other projects with what other clients have implemented and what the State of Oklahoma could do moving forward.

OMES PeopleSoft Financial Modules

OMES currently leverages the following Financial modules:

• Asset Management
• Billing
• Cash Management
• Contracts
• eBill Payment
• eProcurement
• eSupplier Connection
• Financials Portal Pack
• General Ledger
• Grants
• Inventory
• Payables
• Project Costing
• Purchasing
• Receivables
• Strategic Sourcing
• Supply Chain Portal Pack

OMES did not implement the full functionality of every module when they rolled them out.

OMES is also looking to roll out these additional modules based on agency needs:

• Mobile Inventory
• Services Procurement
• Supplier Contract Management
• eSettlements
• Expenses

Some modules will be implemented state-wide while others may be rolled out based on an agency-by-agency need.

The Journey to the Cloud

When Oracle presented the concept of this Move and Improve strategy to OMES, they informed the team that there was a pilot kickoff on April 1. The OMES team spent a lot of time looking over the pilot to decide if it would work for their needs. The planned release of the OCI pilot environment was scheduled for July 15, but there was an early release of the OCI environment on June 22.

A recommendation from OMES executive management that was based on the pilot, the team decided on several iterations of the Move and Improve strategy:

1. Iteration 1: Migrate and identify
2. Iteration 2: Migrate, identify, and fix
3. Iteration 3: Migrate, identify, fix, and discover

Iteration 1 involved migrating and identifying customizations through a fit gap analysis. Iteration 1 was the longest part of the process.

OMES is currently in Iteration 2, which is basically made up of the same tasks as Iteration 1 but at a more granular level. OMES began retrofitting customizations, extensions, modifications, locations, and integrations from PUM 5 to PUM 33. From there, the business moves into user acceptance testing. Iteration 2 involves another export of the current production and PUM 5 data, migrating it into the OCI environment, upgrading it to PUM 33, and upgrading to PeopleTools 8.5.7.1.3. From there, the OMES team works through any issues that the users or business may have identified whether or not the retrofit worked. After fixing those issues, they will retest and see if they pass or fail. OMES had very few that failed, but they are still in the middle of that process.

Iteration 3 looks more at user acceptance testing by not only involving the business perspective but also bringing in a sample of agency users so OMES can get a different perspective.

OMES has set a goal for a fourth iteration that involves go-live and cut over moving forward.

Benefits of Running PeopleSoft in the Cloud

To ensure the success of this project, it was extremely important for the State of Oklahoma and Oracle to work as a team. Having Oracle manage the processes in Cloud allowed the state to focus on other day-to-day work. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) served as a one-Oracle solution for OMES. With OCI, the State of Oklahoma was able to take advantage of:

• App and mid-tier run on OCI with database on Database Cloud
• Oracle Architecture blueprint and roadmap for Oracle Cloud
• Managed Services provided by Oracle
• Architected Cloud Service to address unique requirements

The value of moving PeopleSoft to the Oracle Cloud broke down into four major areas for OMES:

1. Dev/Test in the Cloud
2. Production in the Cloud
3. Backup & DR in the Cloud
4. Extend the Data Center to the Cloud

With Dev/Test in the Cloud, OMES was able to test customizations and new app versions, validate patches, and test cloud-native technologies and frameworks like containers and CI/CD. With Production in the Cloud, they are able to utilize bare metal for consistency and industry-leading price and performance. OMES is also able to use multiple Availability Domains, load balancing, and RAC for HA, and can easily launch Images for Oracle Apps from within the OCI console. Having backup and disaster recovery (DR) in the cloud enables OMES to leverage Oracle Data Guard for data protection and disaster recovery, utilize familiar tooling that enables a faster setup of their DR environment, and integrated Object Storage for backup and archive. Extending their Data Center to the cloud allows the State of Oklahoma to connect its on-premises data center to cloud using VPN or FastConnect and have their choice of deployment options for hybrid environments. While Oracle relieves some of the workload by managing cloud processes for the state, OMES can take full advantage of all of this while still maintaining control over their PeopleSoft environment in-house.

For OMES, moving PeopleSoft to OCI increased both the pace of innovation and the value of IT spend. The State of Oklahoma is now able to launch and scale new apps more quickly with the on-demand infrastructure, which enables the team to increase focus on business and competitive differentiation instead of routine IT tasks and put control in the hands of users. With OCI, OMES reduced reliance on on-premises data centers, transitioned spend from fixed cost to paying only for what they consume, and gained the ability to increase capacity when demand spikes.

Business Processes Knowledge Transfer Model

When OMES started this business transformation, they had to take a long look at their business processes and the key resources that maintained the knowledge of those processes. In order for Oracle to properly assist the state, a business process knowledge transfer was necessary.

OMES had to look at each business process, why a customization may have been needed, and whether or not it still was. It was important to look at if there was out-of-the-box functionality to see if it could replace customizations. This all required a great deal of planning and collaboration within OMES and also with Oracle, so the team could ensure that all of the business processes were being captured in the move to OCI while leveraging the functionality in PeopleSoft PUM 33.

Key aspects of the knowledge transfer included explicit planning, joint plan development, clear roles and mentorship, and participation throughout.

Once Oracle understands the needs of the state, they can begin managing the cloud infrastructure to meet those needs. The whole idea is a shift from reliance on internal pieces at the state to reliance on Oracle. Oracle knows and understands the environment, basic transaction monitoring, when patch releases are coming out and the significance of those, and what will be important to the State of Oklahoma. If there are issues that need resolved or simply a new feature coming soon, Oracle has the visibility and capability to plan for it. Oracle’s goal was to help the state standardize so they could stay up-to-date with current enhancements moving forward in a way that is seamless to the state.

For many customers, being able to take advantage of new capabilities seems like a dream when you’re coming from a customized environment or old release because of the challenge that comes with updating. However, once you get standardization in place, those updates become more realistic. Having Oracle manage that process can be a big help. Performance, configuration, updates, security, patches, etc. are all taken care of for you.

Oracle Managed Cloud Services

The State of Oklahoma’s final system sits with Oracle Managed Cloud Services. Here’s a breakdown of what that entails:

• Database management
  • Space management, patching (reactive and proactive), capacity planning, performance tuning, remote monitor and manage events
• Application management
  • Patch management, instance activity, change control process, 24×7 incident management, improved end-to-end application availability
• System/change management
  • Instance startup/shutdown, intrusion detection, backups/refreshes, OS maintenance, upgrade patching, minor upgrades, unlimited change management

Again, with Oracle being the manufacturer of all of these aspects, it makes it easy to have Oracle manage the entire technology stack sitting underneath the application.

PeopleSoft on OCI Ownership

The breakdown below shows what Oracle oversees for the state and what the state is responsible for overseeing with PeopleSoft running on OCI.

Oracle:

• Incident Management
• Change Management
  • Database and application patching
  • Backup and purge
  • Environment configuration changes
  • Refresh environments
• Capacity Management
  • Administer database schema objects and tablespaces
  • Monitor performance metrics and identify capacity issues
  • Make configuration changes to maintain performance
• Availability Management
  • Analyze recurring unplanned outages and recommend improvements
  • Monitor database and applications
  • Respond proactively to threshold violations
  • Configuration of monitoring events
  • Provide historical data, such as operating system performance graphs
  • Monitor non-Production environments

State of Oklahoma:

• PeopleSoft business processes
• Running state government
• Input and oversight over OCI
• Focus on addressing business issues

Check out the State of Oklahoma’s presentation from Quest Forum Digital Event: PeopleSoft Week to learn more about the journey toward running PeopleSoft on OCI.