Feature Story

By Kat Rollin

March 4, 2008 — Today's higher education institutes embrace technology as a way to keep up with the demand of their students, faculty, and alumni. Constituents expect Web-based self service functionality as well as tightly integrated information and collaboration. And you need more flexibility to meet the unique needs of your environment, without costly customization. Oracle's Peoplesoft Enterprise Campus Solutions running on Sun delivers all of the flexibility and functionality you need to address your demands — on a cost-effective, adaptable, scalable platform.

Scalable, Flexible Infrastructures

Many higher education institutes utilize a number components of Oracle's Peoplesoft Enterprise application suite to provide services for academic advisement, self service, financial aid, recruiting and admissions, student administration and records, and more. Infrastructure for Peoplesoft Enterprise applications can span dozens of servers and hundreds of terabytes of storage, supporting production, development, test, and demo. You need the option to deploy large systems with mainframe capabilities for availability, as well as the the ability to run the same applications on smaller systems without supporting multiple operating systems.

For example, the University of Utah faces many of these requirements. They discovered that Sun is a perfect platform for this environment, providing universities with the flexibility to run Peoplesoft Enterprise applications on very large 48 core systems down to sub-core Solaris Containers. Sun's compatibility guarantee means you can run the Solaris OS and Peoplesoft Enterprise applications across the entire product line, and across OS revisions. So you can support your non-production needs and test and migrate to new versions of Peoplesoft Enterprise applications on less expensive platforms.

Expectations Increase, Budgets Don't

Expectations from technology-savvy students increase with every technological advancement on the Web, creating the demand for more performance. Unfortunately, IT budgets and datacenter resources can rarely keep up with the pace. Sun understands that today, leaps in performance must also be cost effective and power efficient. So, Sun continues to raise the bar with higher performance servers that are significantly more economical and eco-friendly. For example, in Sun and Peoplesoft Campus Solutions benchmarks, the Sun Fire E2900 server, at 12 RU and 24 threads supports 8000 users. Preliminary tests on the Sun Fire T5220 server indicate that it should be able to support 5000 to 6000 users, in a server that consumes 1/6th the rack space, 1/3 less power, and much less of your IT budget.

Round-the-Clock, Secure Access to Information and Services

Peoplesoft Enterprise applications deliver access to services any time, anywhere, from virtually any device that supports a Web browser, fostering an environment for round-the-clock usage. With the built-in reliability features of Sun servers and the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), as well as a full complement of virtualization technologies, and Solaris Cluster software, you can build cost-effective redundancy into your infrastructure so you can maintain the environment and withstand system faults without loss of service to end users. Sun's virtualization technologies also help you consolidate applications on to fewer servers to reduce datacenter costs.

Protecting an individual's information is a important as providing round-the-clock access. Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise applications integrate with the Sun Java Identity Management Suite, a comprehensive digital identity management solution that provides policy services, administration services, and directory services. Sun's identity management solution can help you consolidate authentication, authorization, and single sign-on capabilities to provide transparent, secure access to Peoplesoft Web-based applications.

Oracle's Peoplesoft and Sun

Oracle's Peoplesoft Enterprise Campus Solution is a comprehensive suite of software specifically designed for the changing needs of higher education institutions. It helps manage the entire student lifecycle — from recruiting and admissions to student services and alumni relations. Running on the Sun platform, your infrastructure can support the changing needs of a Peoplesoft Enterprise application environment, reliably, securely, cost-effectively, with fewer demands on your datacenter.

Formerly a systems engineer for Sun, Kat Rollin now reports on partner solutions for sun.com and develops technical marketing communications for the technology industry.