[PandaMoOo]

I've been very curious about the terms that PeopleSoft, and how it relates to our schools. There is a lot of ignorance about something that affects all of us, so I wanted to put some information here so some learn about it. If you have any more sources, corrections, or information, please post it here!

Source for this Post: (Used because it was the easiest.)
http://www.csulb.edu/~cfa/peoplesoft.html

This spring, Governor Davis slashed the system's already razor-thin budget by $43 million.

Amid the budget carnage, Cal State Chancellor Charles Reed has instituted and is continuing to push a $400 million plan to centralize the system's computer operations, using PeopleSoft software, which has been connected to massive cost overruns at other schools.

"We don't have enough chairs for our students," says California Faculty Association spokesperson Alice Sunshine. "This is $400 million over seven years. I don't think we can afford to be taking the chancellor's word for it."

Late in 1996, word spread in tech circles of a fruitful and almost endless contracting opportunity: California State University was seeking to centralize its disparate computer systems. At least as far as higher education goes, the scope of the project was unprecedented. With 23 campuses, nearly 400,000 students, and 42,000 employees, the CSU system is the largest in the country and, from a technology perspective, a long way from being wired. The system's mountains of data on employees, finances, and students were stored on incompatible systems at 23 separate computing hubs around the state.

Ernst says that so far, in the early stages of the CSU project, there are no signs of major cost overruns. Of course, much of the $150 million the CSU has spent to date has gone for fixed-cost items like a data center and software licenses; if they occur, budget overruns are more likely to be visible during the project's installation phase, when $100- to $300-an-hour consultants will be working on all 23 campuses.

Cal State courted bids from the two largest data outsourcing companies, IBM and Unisys Corp., and chose IBM, which submitted the low bid. (Staff evaluations called Unisys' center "quite functional," but a little "too boilerplate" compared to IBM's.) IBM eventually opted out of the contract, leaving CSU with Unisys, essentially by default. In March, Cal State agreed to pay Unisys $60 million over five years for use of its Salt Lake City data center, meaning that the most crucial piece of the PeopleSoft puzzle would also be the most expensive.