Why Keeping PeopleTools Versions Up to Date Is Important ?

For organizations that manage critical and complex tools like PeopleSoft on-premises, version upgrades can be a major headache. Software changes to core systems often have upstream and downstream consequences that can be difficult and expensive to resolve—especially in cases where several versions are skipped in the upgrade. And if the organization has done any in-house customization to the version it has in place, it is possible that all this development work would have to be redone from scratch after a version upgrade. This could add both time and cost to the upgrade project.

Furthermore, many organizations are satisfied with the functionality of the version they have. A 2020 survey of PeopleSoft customers found that 97% of respondents believe that their current PeopleSoft version meets all or most of their business needs. It is difficult to justify the disruption that a version upgrade will cause when the business is happy with the status quo.

The Importance of CPUs

Unfortunately, vendors eventually end support for older versions of enterprise software, and the result is that critical patch updates (CPUs) are no longer available for those versions. Some organizations are still on PeopleTools 8.55 despite the fact that Oracle ended support for that version in 2019. Support for version 8.56 was scheduled to expire in mid-2020, but customers got a reprieve due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That extension was scheduled to end in April 2021, and the CPU issued that month seems to be the last for that version.

But why would any organization bother to do these updates if they are happy with the version they have? The main reason is cybersecurity. Many of the most critical CPUs are security-related, providing remediation for newly discovered software vulnerabilities. The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report for 2021 found that 39% of data breaches this past year were the result of application vulnerabilities. Last year, the Ponemon Institute and IBM found that 42% of companies that suffered a data breach attributed the cause to a known but unpatched software vulnerability. Clearly, failure to apply the most current CPUs can present a significant risk to an organization.

The End of Support as a Catalyst

But rather than fretting about a complex version upgrade in the on-premises data center, what if organizations used the end of support for PeopleTools 8.56 as an opportunity to move their core Oracle and PeopleSoft infrastructure to the cloud? While a direct move to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model may be expensive and complex at this point, it is possible to take the interim step of moving the existing deployment to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), at a significantly lower price point than Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform—or staying on-premises.

Astute Business Solutions’ Zero-cost Cloud Migration services have a proven track record of making the project as simple as possible. We use a “lift and shift” methodology, which creates minimal disruption and completes the migration in a few weeks rather than many months. For organizations that need to upgrade to the latest versions of the different software solutions included in the migration, we use a“move and improve” approach to ensure that the best version of each tool is a part of the new cloud deployment.

Moving PeopleTools into OCI enables organizations to take advantage of the many tools available on the platform, such as Oracle Cloud Guard, which provides a unified view of an organization’s cloud security posture across OCI. They can also take advantage of database backup and recovery with VSS and improved efficiency of the cloud infrastructure with Oracle Cloud Advisor.

No Better Time than Now

Few organizations are still debating whether to move their core infrastructure to the cloud, but rather are focused on when and how. While such a migration can seem daunting, it can be accomplished easily with support from the experts at Astute Business Solutions.

Every day that an organization keeps its core applications in the data center is another day of delay of the efficiency gains, cost savings, and added revenue opportunities that the cloud can bring. A strategic, holistic approach to the migration process—and ongoing maintenance and improvement—helps companies to modernize in the least disruptive and most effective way.