Accelerated Upgrades
A New & Improved PeopleSoft Upgrade Process

Posted on 1/9/2007 (originally published in print on 1/1/2005)

San Francisco was the city of choice for this year's PeopleSoft Connect. As a resident of the Bay Area, I was a little disappointed. Getting on a plane and leaving work behind is usually fun and exciting, but living in the metro area where Connect is held can be a completely different experience.

Schlepping back and forth from home everyday didn't quite compare to a stay in a nearby, luxury hotel. I did manage to drag myself across the bridge every morning, but I was cutting it close on several early sessions. As the nights got later and the week longer, it became really difficult to make the morning commute. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the highlight of my Connect experience came during the last session on Friday morning.

Friday's session covered an improved upgrade process and the new tools that will be used during upcoming releases. The presenters at the session were clear and fairly knowledgeable, which can sometimes be a unique experience at Connect. I would highly recommend downloading the presentation for Session 4028, “HCM 8.9 Upgrades: New Technology Changing the Rules of the Game.”

The new upgrade process, called Accelerated Upgrade, will be available for HCM 8.9 in April 2005. The process relies on Ascential, a data mapping and migration tool. Using the new upgrade process and the Ascential tool, PeopleSoft is reporting a time savings of as much as 40%. Much of the time savings is attributed to the new process design. (See Figure 1) Rather than upgrading your production database in place (the current process), a system database is built, and all of your data is migrated to the new database. Although downtime is still required for go live, the total downtime is reported to be much lower. In fact, PeopleSoft is working on a process that would allow incremental movement of production data which would result in almost no downtime at all. Note: This incremental technique has not been demonstrated and no release dates for its completion were provided.