Quest had the opportunity to meet Francisco Acuña Castillo with Universidad de Santiago de Chile about their PeopleSoft in the Cloud journey. A 160-year-old public university in the country of Chile, the university has around 18,000 students comprised of undergraduate, graduate and continuous education, 9 sets of faculties and 600 full – time professors.

Key Takeaways

About Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Francisco oversaw the implementation of the PeopleSoft Campus Solutions at Universidad de Santiago de Chile. The University purchased PeopleSoft HCM, Campus, and Finances in 2007. PeopleSoft HCM is on version 9.0 PeopleTools 8.53 and PeopleSoft Financials is on version 9.1 PeopleTools 8.53 and both these applications are in production. Their current effort is to start new with Peoplesoft Campus Solutions on version 9.2 and PeopleTools 8.55 on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with the help of Astute Business Solutions. They went live with phase 1 of Campus Solutions 9.2 in January and plan to go live with phase 2 and 3 later this year and into 2019.

What were the drivers for you to begin using PeopleSoft in the Cloud?

We learned several lessons from our failed on-premise implementation of Campus Solutions version 9.0, so we decided to avoid those pitfalls and start with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. We needed to start working on the implementation as soon as possible without lengthy delays for on-premise hardware procurement and deployment. We were also aware of the Oracle roadmap which was focused on adding new capabilities in CS 9.2, features that our organization and student community wanted to implement. As a result, we realized that trying to implement the 9.0 version would have been a nonproductive expenditure of resources because the 9.2 version with the PeopleTools had a lot more to offer. At the Latin America Higher Education User Group Conference, we established contact with Astute Business Solutions who offered us a Cloud Service with the latest PeopleSoft and PeopleTools versions. However, the main reason that this service caught our attention was the fast and efficient way that the services were provided.

What environments have you deployed in the cloud (dev, test, demo, pum etc.)?

We are using demo, dev test and production with Campus Solution.

Do you use the elastic scalability of the cloud?

Yes. Our initial deployment is with the configuration needed for implementation. We have scaled our OCI footprint to include additional instances for Production and non-Production.

Do you use self service provisioning of environments?

Yes. We use PeopleSoft Cloud Manager to provision instances We use Astute Business Solutions as our Cloud Managed Service Provider to provision, maintain, update and manage our PeopleSoft instances on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

How has using the cloud changed your [dev, test, maintenance, prod, demo, training, prototyping] process?

It was literally a project life – saver. Because of the fast ways that all the instances were available, we were able to start on the project in very little time knowing the demo, starting the training and the developing.

What was the timeline for deploying PeopleSoft in the Cloud?

The instance deployment was less than a few days from the date we signed a contract with Astute to deploy PeopleSoft on Cloud. Our team has access to application development tools like App Designer as well as the browser – based CS 9.2 application to work on configuration, data loading, prototyping, and testing. Based on this, our Phase 1 implementation was accelerated to go live in less than 6 months.

What was your experience in deploying PeopleSoft in the Cloud / Cloud Manager? What did you learn that other customers could benefit from?

The high level of service and the small amount of time that it takes for the instances to be ready to start using.

What obstacles or concerns, if any, did you encounter in deploying PeopleSoft in the Cloud?

We had some troubles with the lack of knowledge on our part with the COBOL licenses, the specific need for the Spanish language packs and the need for Microsoft Office for the migration process. The delivered images in Oracle Cloud Marketplace do not have a Spanish language pack installed. There is not an automated step in Cloud Manager to install Language Packs.

Since deploying PeopleSoft in the Cloud, what benefits have you seen for you and your company?

We were able to do some demos fast, and we had a high level of service response.  Most of all, we were able to get state of the art PeopleSoft and PeopleTools versions. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure was the most cost-effective approach when compared to the option we had to deploy new hardware on-premise for this implementation.

Are you using the Cloud to enable your Selective Adoption activities – evaluating new features or applying updates?

Not yet, because we’re only focusing on the customizations and configuration. We are aware that there is a new PUM Image every quarter and we will use those in case we need fixes for any bugs we may discover during our implementation. Our current focus is to get a Production instance of CS 9.2 up and running and once we are live, we will implement a Selective Adoption Strategy. Astute has provisioned an instance of the latest CS 9.2 PUM Image for us to review new features.

What services partner did you work with and what was their role? 

Astute Business Solutions consulted with us on our CS 9.2 implementation needs and provided an implementation service quote. They also designed our PeopleSoft Architecture on Oracle Cloud and provisioned our PeopleSoft CS 9.2 implementation instances (Demo, Dev and Test) on OCI. This included access to Windows RDP Cloud instances for us to assess the need of PeopleTools development in the cloud. Astute also provided connectivity to Cloud from our on-premise location including file sharing to allow us to upload and download content into PeopleSoft.

Astute also provides a Managed Service (Cloud MSP) to maintain and support our CS 9.2 instances. We have a contract with Astute to support our CS 9.2 production on OCI.

Where do you want to take your company’s PeopleSoft strategy in the next 2-3 years? What are plans for the Cloud as part of that strategy?

Our goal is to upgrade all our PeopleSoft applications such as HCM and Financials to version 9.2. Based on our recent successful and positive experience with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, we would not hesitate to use it again for a future PeopleSoft upgrade or implementation projects. In the meantime, we will continue to rollout phased releases of CS 9.2 as per our roadmap using OCI.