BITS migrated their PeopleSoft environments to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Birla Institute of Technology & Science, popularly known as BITS Pilani, is a premier higher education institute in India offering various UG & PG programs in the fields of science & technology. BITS Pilani, a deemed to be university under section 3 of the UGC Act 1956, has been in the higher education industry for about six decades now. It is one of the three privately funded Institutes identified as 'Institute of Eminence' by the MHRD, Govt of India in the year 2018. BITS Pilani has four established campuses - Pilani (Rajasthan), Goa, Hyderabad & Dubai and one virtual campus offering UG & PG programmes for working professionals.

BITS Pilani migrated their PeopleSoft environments to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) from a private data center. This migration has resulted in considerable savings on CAPEX, and, has allowed BITS to take advantage of PeopleSoft Cloud Manager. Integration with Oracle Analytics Cloud, Autonomous Data warehouse, Oracle Content and Experience Cloud service has enabled BITS to gain more insight into their PeopleSoft system.

BITS used the upgrade project as an opportunity to take up de-customization & to identify over 200 customizations, moving these to configuration using Page and Field Configurator, or, isolating the customization using Event Mapping Framework. Usage of Fluid Interface for self-service transactions puts BITS in a position to more easily stay current and rapidly adopt new features.

Our key goals & objectives of the migration to OCI are:

• Reduce Hardware refresh, procurement, operations & maintenance costs
• Streamline disparate and multiple support processes and vendors for infrastructure and application administration
• Reduce issue resolution times for infrastructure support
• Reduce lead time required to ‘bump-up’ infrastructure to support additional load due to events such as student registrations (x2 /year), grades posting etc.
• Improved visibility of the PeopleSoft environment and use the data to make informed business decisions for a better student experience

We have identified Sierra-Cedar India to provide services to migrate PeopleSoft HCM 9.2, FSCM 9.1 & CS 9.0 applications from a private data center to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

The migration project was completed in an aggressive schedule of 18 weeks duration, from start to finish, and environments were released for end users and students as per schedule. This migration project involved many complex challenges such as:

• Different versions of PeopleSoft and PeopleTools was a huge challenge to overcome as it prevented the consultant from standardizing the migration
• Much more than ‘just a migration’…the migration team had to analyze and understand each of the OCI components, work through every aspect of BITS configuration and standardize before migrating them to OCI
• Operating system was converted from Windows to OEL
• Migrating from an outsourced data center that involved multiple system stakeholders, extremely precise coordination and communication with several 3rd parties was essential for the success of the migration project

BITS PeopleSoft environments were successfully migrated and were live on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in July 2020.

The consultant created several automated scripts in addition to what is provided by OCI, which not only helped streamline the migration project, but also provided the necessary tools for managing the environments effectively. This migration has benefited BITS in the following areas:

• Considerable savings on Capex (hardware refresh, procurement) and Opex (operational & maintenance costs)
• Significantly quicker response to infrastructure level incidents (10 hours to < 1hour)
• Reduced lead time to bump-up infrastructure components to support student registrations peak load. Additional capacity made available in a fraction of time than in the past.
• Streamlined support processes for infra and application administration support with SCI
• Availability of additional platform and cloud services such as PeopleSoft Cloud Manager, Oracle Analytics Cloud, Autonomous Datawarehouse, Oracle Content and Experience Cloud service etc. that are integrated and enabling BITS to gain more insight into their PeopleSoft system and build upon the solid foundation.

Configuration and de-customization

Sierra-Cedar’s “PUM Optimization Matrix” tool was leveraged for identifying the customizations that can be handled through Oracle’s Event Mapping and Page Field configuration features.

To Start with, the consultant’s team has deliberated with the client business users on the enhanced features of PeopleSoft 9.2 vis-à-vis the customizations and bolt-on applications used at BITS. With an intent to be at the forefront of technological advances, BITS team has decided to leverage the advanced features like Event mapping, Page field configurator, Fluid Interface and Dashboards. The aim was also to achieve potential reduction in costs going forward while doing PUM updates.

The tool has identified:

• About 200+ customizations which were eventually converted into configuration changes, leveraging the delivered Page field configurator and
• PeopleCode customizations that were converted into Event mapping thereby reducing maintenance costs in future upgrades.

Major enhanced functionalities leveraged by BITS:

• Implementation of fluid Self-Service components for delivered functionality - Enabled fluid components for Personal Information, Leave Management, Talent Profile and ePerformance with client requested customizations.
• Conversion of custom self-service components from classic to fluid UI - Created new homepage tiles to navigation collections for bolt on components to enable easy user access. Ex: Housing, Payroll and Compensation etc.,
• MSS - Classic to Fluid conversion - Enabled Fluid component Approvals, My Team, Employee Snapshot, Leave Management, Team Performance, Team Talent profile with client requested customizations.
• Conversion of conventional workflow to Approval workflow engine (AWE) framework.
• Enabled delivered AWE for Name Change, Address Change and Marital Status Change incorporating existing business rules.

Utilization of 9.2 features to replace customizations

• Page Field Configurator - sizable existing customizations (Page Field Properties and Record field Properties) on delivered pages by using new oracle delivered framework Page Field Configurator which reduces retrofit efforts in future upgrades.
• Event Mapping: Re-implemented sizable existing PeopleCode customizations on delivered events by using oracle delivered framework event mapping and related content service which reduces retrofit efforts during future PUM updates. These changes will considerably reduce future PUM update effort and costs.
• Role based Home page functionality - Enabled Oracle delivered Employee, Manager and Admin fluid home pages with a combination of custom tiles and Navigation collections based on roles.
• Security Revamp - Created new permission lists/Roles with access to Fluid Components, Tiles and Homepages
• Identified the role name references in PeopleSoft objects and made the changes to use new role names

Team photograph:

See also

BITS has also been recognized twice as a feature innovator for other efforts:

• BITS deploys fluid self service for PeopleSoft Campus Solutions.
• BITS accelerates PeopleSoft transformation by managing PeopleSoft customizations.