HP Integrity and Peopletools 8.45 Positioning for the Adaptive Enterprise
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HP Integrity and PeopleTools 8.45 Positioning for the Adaptive Enterprise On July 9, 2004, PeopleSoft announced full support for PeopleSoft Enterprise applications on Itanium with the certification of HP-UX 11i v.2 (HP-UX 11.23) on all tiers with PeopleTools 8.45. PeopleSoft has supported HP Integrity servers and the Itanium2™ processor as a database only platform for HP-UX, RedHat Linux, and Windows since early 2003. This technical note will help to clarify some questions regarding the certification and its relevance to the PeopleSoft environment. What PeopleSoft applications are certified? PeopleTools certifications are specific to PeopleSoft Enterprise applications. Since the merger of PeopleSoft and JD Edwards, PeopleSoft offers applications built upon three separate architectures: · PeopleSoft Enterprise (the traditional PeopleSoft applications) · PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne (former open-system JD Edwards applications) · PeopleSoft World (former JD Edwards applications for the IBM i-series) PeopleSoft Enterprise applications are all built upon a foundation tool set called PeopleTools. PeopleSoft tests and certifies their PeopleTools code against different OS versions. All of the Enterprise applications are then tested and, if necessary, patched to run on that version of PeopleTools. All PeopleSoft Enterprise applications are therefore certified to run on the OS versions that are supported by the underlying PeopleTools version. To see which versions of PeopleTools are certified with different HP supported Operating Systems, please refer to the matrices available at http://www.peoplesoft-hp.com/salestools/certifications/index.asp. What about the JD Edwards Applications (World and EnterpriseOne)? PeopleSoft continues to develop their World product which is a legacy JD Edwards set of applications that run only on the IBM i-Series servers. In addition to World, PeopleSoft also continues to develop a set of applications from pre-merger JD Edwards called EnterpriseOne. The EnterpriseOne application code stream is developed on a common tool set and runs on HP-UX 11i v 1 (HP-UX 11.11), Windows 32-bit, AS400, AIX, and Solaris. We continue to work toward certification of the EnterpriseOne applications for HP-UX 11i v.2 and the 64-bit versions of Windows and Linux. For up to date plans for the EnterpriseOne application certifications, please ask your PeopleSoft representative or your HP PeopleSoft Sales Alliance Manager. Your regional contact can be found at http://www.peoplesoft-hp.com/misc/contacts/index.asp. When will Windows 64-bit and/or Linux 64-bit be certified? Windows and Linux on HP Integrity are certified on the database tier only with current versions of PeopleSoft Enterprise applications. This allows customers to utilize a horizontal scalability strategy on 32-bit systems, such as HP Proliant Servers and Blades, for the web and application tier where it is appropriate, and take advantage of vertical scalability where they need it most, on the database tier. PeopleSoft is currently looking into support of the web, application and batch tiers on Windows and Linux 64-bit. No dates have been announced at this point . Information on porting efforts can be obtained from your PeopleSoft Sales Team or the HP PeopleSoft Sales Alliance Team: http://www.peoplesoft- hp.com/misc/contacts/index.asp. Why should I upgrade to PeopleTools 8.45? PeopleSoft makes several enhancements with their updated PeopleTools releases. Beyond the performance enhancements inherent with Itanium, there are several benefits to upgrading to the latest version of PeopleTools. Obviously, you have spent a lot of time and money getting your applications and customizations to a point where they are stable and may be hesitant to undertake another upgrade. Depending on your current PeopleTools version, there are several reasons to justify undertaking such a project: 1. Businesses running PeopleTools version 7.5 and below are facing imminent drop of support from PeopleSoft. PeopleSoft no longer supports 7.0x and below, and 7.5x will be dropped soon as well. Although some may view that their operations are stable enough that they feel they can continue without support, pressures from regulatory commissions and recent legislation (including Sarbanes- Oxley) make a strong case for maintaining a supported PeopleSoft configuration. 2. PeopleSoft’s 8.x architecture makes more efficient use of the server environment, makes it easier to deploy in a global consolidated environment, and greatly reduces client maintenance as all applications are now accessed through a browser. 3. Newer PeopleSoft applications have more robust functionality built into them and can help managers to realize their business goals more effectively. Additionally, PeopleSoft’s focus on the customer Total Ownership Experience has resulted in a number of usability enhancements in these newer applications. Companies with reasonably up to date versions of PeopleTools may also find justification for an additional upgrade. For those businesses who are currently on PeopleTools 8.4x, it is all about timing. If you’ve just finished a lengthy upgrade project and are now stable, additional benefits of moving to PeopleTools 8.45 may not be easily justifiable. Yet, there are several benefits to moving to PeopleTools 8.45, and line of business managers should weigh these benefits carefully. If you are currently upgrading to a newer version of PeopleTools, it may be well worth slipping the upgrade project and burdening the additional expense now in order to take advantage of PeopleTools 8.45. Some of the compelling enhancements include: 1. A PeopleSoft Performance Monitor tool to enhance application performance and monitoring. 2. Upgraded third-party toolsets taking advantage of improvements made by PeopleSoft’s partners: a. BEA Tuxedo upgrade from 6.5 to 8.1 b. BEA Weblogic upgrade from 6.1 to 8.1 c. Jolt from 1.2 to 8.1 d. Verity VDK from 2.71 to 5.01 e. Java from 1.3 to 1.4 f. MicroFocus COBOL ServerExpress from 2.0.11 to 2.2 SP1 3. Support for new Operating Systems such as Linux, and HP-UX 11i v.2 All of these enhancements are driven by PeopleSoft’s goals to create a more robust platform that will improve usability and decrease costs associated with the PeopleSoft environment. Moreover, upgrades to the more recent versions of the third-party completer applications increase performance and support the longevity of the environment. Several of the above enhancements are also included in PeopleTools 8.44. For those implementation teams who have already begun their upgrade to PeopleTools 8.44, why should they entertain moving to PeopleTools 8.45? Beyond just having the ability to deploy on Itanium, there are business reasons to consider moving to PeopleTools 8.45. As many third-party software upgrades had been introduced with 8.44, it was well expected that functionality defects would be initially discovered during the testing of 8.44. PeopleSoft has introduced patches to 8.44 and will continue to do so in order to repair any unforeseen issues with the original release. One advantage to maintenance release updates, such as deploying production systems on 8.45, will be a full roll up of all known issues from the prior release. Other minor patch updates to third-party products have also been built into the PeopleTools 8.45 release. Some of these include updates to BEA Tuxedo (version 8.1 rp 89), BEA Weblogic (version 8.1 sp2), and Java (version 1.4.2). As part of PeopleSoft’s TOE initiative, upgrades to minor maintenance release versions, such as moving from PeopleTools 8.44 to 8.45, promise to be relatively easy. Application teams should expect little more additional work than would be necessary to implement patch bundles on a current release. Additional features of PeopleTools 8.45 include a native 64-bit build for HP-UX on the Itanium chipset. PeopleSoft and HP believe that the value to be attained by the performance of the EPIC chip architecture, as well as the enhanced price/performance ratio available by deploying on an industry standard processor family will be compelling for many customers. Ram Gupta, PeopleSoft’s EVP of Products and Technology says, “Enterprise customers are demanding more in terms of the total ownership experience. Working with HP, we are able to deliver to our customers the price/performance advantages of Itanium and the pure Internet architecture of PeopleSoft applications. That’s a winning combination that not only will enhance the return on IT investment, but also will offer our customers a significant competitive edge." Beyond code stability and additional OS availability, no significant functionality changes have been implemented for PeopleTools 8.45. As such, customers who are familiar with the attributes of PeopleTools 8.44 may expect the same functionality from PeopleTools 8.45, with a lower defect density requiring fewer patches. As with any significant code changes, maintenance release upgrades (such as moving from 8.44 to 8.45), or significant patch bundle upgrades (such as implementing the full set of 8.44 patch bundles), it is recommended that customers perform acceptance testing during their development schedule. With enhancements to PeopleTools 8.45, we expect this acceptance testing to be smooth for those who already have experience with PeopleTools 8.44. Why should I consider HP Integrity? The two main reasons that customers should consider HP Integrity servers are the processor roadmap and price/performance. The Intel Itanium processor is built on the next generation chip architecture developed by HP labs. The EPIC chip architecture promises to provide significantly better performance than RISC or CISC architectures and enables parallelism within the chip for applications developed for this new architecture. With this in mind, EPIC not only offers superior performance today, but also provides a long term roadmap to eclipse current chip architectures. Since Itanium is an open standard chip supporting several operating systems, economies of scale will continue to drive down production costs for the processor family.