BroncoDirect A Bad Idea?

[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.

[PandaMoOo]

So a small summary, I know its a lot to read:
-$400 Million for ALL Cal states over 7 years.
-There has been signifigent intergration errors with the system with other school districts.
-$60 Million of that is for the hosting of it, which is in Salt Lake City. (Out of State.)


Some sidenotes I'd like to through in:
-Peoplesoft is written in Java.
-Oracle (stock value: ~$50 Billion) is trying to hastily buy out PeopleSoft for $7.7 Billion in cash.

The most disturbing thing to me is the fact that its written in Java! I'd like an expert on the matter to comment, but Java has always been a slow language in my opinon as a programmer of other languages. Current websearch information is showing it to be one fifth the speed of "C++ .NET" applications. Down with Java!

[scannergeek]

I think centralization is a very bad idea as far a security...with "incompatable" systems, at least if one system is hacked, the data on other systems is safe. If a major security flaw is found in PeopleSoft, they could potentially wipe out ENTIRE systems...sure, they have backups, but they will be about a day old, losing thousands of recent changes in the database.

[Admin]

Thanks for the great info. How exactly does the new system benefit the student? Is the CSU hoping that the new system will save the CSU and California time and money in the long run?
Maybe I am thinking short-term but I don't think it was a great idea to invest in such system when the governor slashed the CSU budget.

[PandaMoOo]

Originally Posted by KayCee

Thanks for the great info. How exactly does the new system benefit the student? Is the CSU hoping that the new system will save the CSU and California time and money in the long run?
Maybe I am thinking short-term but I don't think it was a great idea to invest in such system when the governor slashed the CSU budget.

Yeah. In the long run it should save 60 million a year or so it seems. But I mean, at what expense of time and effort and such?

And you got a good point! A lot of these decisions were made BEFORE the budget crisis came, so it might not have been such a bad decision to spend so much money at THAT time; and now that they're committed... all is well.

The new system removes a lot of the older more redundant systems that were in place, it sounds like the peoplesoft system replaces almost all electronic systems on campus dealing with human resources, and money and the like.