July 2018

PEOPLESOFT PERFORMANCE
ON PUBLIC CLOUD
INFRASTRUCTURE
A comparison study to augment your public cloud evaluation

Presence of IT
 CONTENTS
Executive Summary 2
Introduction 4
Methodology 5
Public Cloud Infrastructure 6
Conclusion 17
Beyond The Numbers 18
How Can We Help 19

1
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In today’s business environment, time to market is one of the most critical factors to an organization’s
success, and even short delays in a product release can dramatically reduce profitability, market share
and competitive edge. Organizations with static compute resources have to consistently grapple
with the trade-offs related to under and over provisioning of in-house compute capacity. Progressive
organizations looking to eliminate cost inefficiencies rank IT infrastructure cost very high on the
priority list. Cost efficiency, business efficiency and agility offered by cloud computing is hard to ignore
and therefore moving to the cloud is no longer a question of ‘if’ for the new age enterprise.
With more and more organizations opting to migrate their PeopleSoft applications to the cloud every
day, finding the right provider to host your application can be a bit of a minefield - there’s plenty of
choices and service offerings, but you need to find which can offer the best performance, at the best
price.
PeopleSoft applications and its technology platform is fully equipped to realize the benefits of
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). PeopleSoft Cloud Architecture utilities like Deployment Packages
and Automated Configuration Manager, among others, allow for dynamic scaling, quick patching and
optimizing hardware resources by creating middle-tier virtual machines (VMs) on demand.
To ease navigating through the modern digital enterprise ecosystem, Presence of IT has conducted
a detailed performance evaluation of running PeopleSoft applications on three different public cloud
infrastructures – Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure cloud.
These three cloud infrastructures were selected for this evaluation as they are the common public
cloud options for most PeopleSoft customers and were purchased from the vendor websites. The
comparison metrics were chosen to cover the critical and common activities performed in PeopleSoft
application by various key user groups such as technical system administrators, business users and
self-service users.
Our key findings include:
• System Maintenance: For system maintenance tasks such as software installation and patching
using Deployment Packages, server domain administration and database maintenance tasks,
performance in Amazon Web Services and Oracle Cloud are closely comparable and better to that
of Azure cloud. These tasks are performed by technical system administrators on a regular basis to
keep the application current and running efficiently.
• Application Performance: For application usage activities such as accessing and performing data
transactions, running query reports, executing batch jobs with bulk data volumes, performing
search functions performance on Amazon Web Services is statistically better when compared to
Oracle and Azure clouds. These tasks are performed by application end users on regular basis as
part of their normal day-to-day functions.

2
 • Cost Efficiency: When comparing the cost of running PeopleSoft applications on identical cloud
infrastructure while taking into consideration the cost of compute power, storage and operating
system licenses, Oracle Cloud costs significantly lower, followed by Azure Cloud in the mid-range
option and AWS costing relatively higher.
One of the early and vital decisions in the transition to IaaS model is the choice of cloud infrastructure
to run your applications. While various factors contribute to this decision ultimately the choice
comes down to balancing performance against cost. The below graph illustrates how the three cloud
infrastructure services stack up on performance versus cost comparison:
• Oracle Cloud offers mid-range performance at a significantly lower cost
• AWS cloud offers better performance at a relatively higher cost
• Azure cloud offers mid-range cost with relatively lower performance
•
• Performance vs Cost Analysis
• 3
Cumulative Performance Rating

•
2.5
•
• 2
• 1.5
• 1
• 0.5
• 0
• 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
•
Estimated Monthly Cost (USD)
•
AWS Azure Oracle

In addition to the performance and cost metrics, it is important to think about potential simplification
and reduce administration effort that comes from great add-ons such as the PeopleSoft Cloud Manager
that will contribute towards further and sustained cost savings. The PeopleSoft Cloud Manager (free
with your PeopleSoft licenses) is an orchestration framework to provision and manage PeopleSoft
environments on Oracle Cloud. It can help create task specific environments that can last as long as the
task is needed, for example, training or testing for a project. PeopleSoft Cloud Manager will enable you
to focus more on business and less on infrastructure management by taking away all the complexities
involved in acquiring and managing the infrastructure to run PeopleSoft on Oracle Cloud.

Application development and operational/maintenance budgets for most companies

is 50% to 70% of total IT costs. Considering that price is by far the biggest driver
for organizations electing to utilize cloud computing, we believe that for
mid-size organizations that are running PeopleSoft applications, the Oracle
Cloud provides a good balance of performance and price point.
By shifting the responsibility of maintaining Service Level Agreements
(SLAs) to the cloud service provider, cloud computing not only saves
costs with no upfront commitment but also drives competitive
advantage by increasing IT resource efficiency and capacity that can
be added in a matter of minutes.

3
INTRODUCTION
Transition of enterprise applications from on-premise to cloud infrastructure is one of the key
challenges faced by organizations globally. One of the early and vital decisions in the transition to IaaS
model is the choice of cloud infrastructure to run your applications. While various factors contribute
to this decision, a significant aspect is the performance and cost of the enterprise application on the
target cloud infrastructure to ensure it meets your expectations and needs.
With this in mind, Presence of IT conducted a detailed performance evaluation of running PeopleSoft
applications on three different public cloud infrastructures – Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI),
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure cloud.
We have summarized our findings on this report where we compared a number of metrics for and our
objective analysis of the performance of the public cloud platforms in relation to running PeopleSoft
enterprise applications. Additionally, it looks at value for money when it comes to performance
and cloud infrastructure for PeopleSoft. This report is not intended to be the sole evaluation guide
for an enterprise’s public cloud infrastructure needs, but supplement any information as part of a
comprehensive review of various enterprise specific factors.

4
METHODOLOGY
• Microsoft Windows Servers of identical size were provisioned on the three cloud platforms.
The specifications of the servers matched to the best extent possible so that the underlying
infrastructure used for this comparison study is identical.
• PeopleSoft Human Capital Management demonstration instance (HCM 9.2, Image 26, running
PeopleTools 8.56.07) was deployed on each cloud platform using Native OS Deployment Packages
(DPKs).
• A predefined set of tests were carried out in a sequence on each of the cloud platforms and the
execution timings were captured.
• To minimize network latency, the entire activity was executed in a remote desktop environment
with the user connected directly to the server.

5
PUBLIC CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE
- SYSTEM INFORMATION
AWS Azure Oracle Cloud

Instance Shape M4 large B2MS VM Standard 1.1

DC Location US EAST (N VA) EAST US OR EAST US 2 US EAST (N VA)

Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows
OS Name
Server 2012 R2 Standard Server 2012 R2 Datacentre Server 2012 R2 Standard
Version 6.3.9600 Build 9600 6.3.9600 Build 9600 6.3.9600 Build 9600

System Manufacturer Xen Microsoft Corporation QEMU

Standard PC (i440FX +
System Model HVM domU Virtual Machine
PIIX, 1996)
System Type x64-based PC x64-based PC x64-based PC

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5- Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5- Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-
2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz, 2300 2673 v3 @ 2.40GHz, 2394 2699 v3 @ 2.30GHz, 2295
Processor
MHz, 1 Core(s), 2 Logical MHz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical MHz, 1 Core(s), 2 Logical
Processor(s) Processor(s) Processor(s)
Xen 4.2.amazon, American Megatrends EFI Development Kit II /
BIOS Version/Date
8/24/2006 Inc. 090007, 6/2/2017 OVMF 0.0.0, 2/6/2015
Installed Physical
8.00 GB 8.00 GB 7.00 GB
Memory
Total Physical Memory 8.00 GB 8.00 GB 7.00 GB
Available Physical
1.16 GB 2.42 GB 2.74 GB
Memory
VCPU 2 vCPU 2 vCPU 2 vCPU
256 GB
256 GB 256 GB
Disk Storage
(Premium SSD)
(gp2 – SSD) (NVMe SSD)

6
Performance Study
Performance of the cloud infrastructure is evaluated on a variety of activities starting from downloading and
installing the PeopleSoft application to executing various standard functionality used within the application.
Timing of each activity is recorded in a unit suitable for the specific task like seconds, minutes etc.
Network Activities
Network speed (download, upload, latency) is critical to overall application performance in cloud. Applications
installed on the server are predominantly accessed by users through public or private internet. All three cloud
services offer different options for direct network connectivity from customer site to their data center at additional
cost. For this study, the network speed from the cloud instance to public internet is measured as a benchmark.
Better performance in this area means faster response times for overall application access.
This measurement is performed using Google’s Internet Speed Test utility.

AWS Azure Oracle Cloud

Download 458.8 Mbps 461.8 Mbps 205.1 Mbps

Upload 517.8 Mbps 94.3 Mbps 48.8 Mbps

Latency 3ms 33ms 18ms

Duration for download various installation software packages are recorded in seconds.
AWS Azure Oracle Cloud
Download Application
600 2700 1950
DPK
PeopleTools Patch
180 600 600
Download
Elastic Search Download 45 40 30

COBOL Download 13 19 16

Verdict
AWS is significantly faster for both the internet speed test and the time taken for downloading the
installation software, followed Oracle Cloud and then Azure.

Download Activities
4000
3500
3000
Seconds (Total)

2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
AWS Azure Oracle

7
Deployment Activities
PeopleSoft use the Deployment Packages (DPK) framework for both initial installation and on-going patching of
the application. Ongoing patching of the technology and application layer is critical to staying current with the
application. DPK framework significantly reduces the manual effort needed by system administrators by bundling
the core software components along with all its dependencies and automating the end-to-end deployment
exercise. For this study, common deployment activities performed using the DPK framework is evaluated in all
three cloud platforms.
Better performance in this area means shorter downtime for system maintenance activities.
Timing of deployment tasks is recorded in minutes.
AWS Azure Oracle Cloud

Native OS DPK Download 10 45 38

Deploy DPK (Full-Tier) 70 240 41

Deploy DPK (Mid-Tier) 14 36 10

Un-Deploy DPK 8 13 10
PeopleTools Client
3 11 5
Deployment
Elastic Search DPK Deploy 2 3 4
Micro Focus COBOL
1 4 2
Installation

Verdict
For deployment packages based installation activities of PeopleSoft applications, performance of Oracle
Cloud and AWS recorded similar results, while Azure cloud tracked significantly slower.

Deployment Activities
400
350
300
Minutes (Total)

250
200
150
100
50
0
AWS Azure Oracle

8
System Administration Activities
PeopleSoft application has a multi-tiered server architecture involving Web, Application, Process, Database
servers. There are various on-going maintenance tasks involved with these server tiers that are performed by
system administrators. For this study, common administrative activities such as start and stop of server domains is
evaluated in all three cloud platforms.
Better performance in this area means shorter downtime for system maintenance activities.
Timing of system administration tasks recorded in seconds.

AWS Azure Oracle Cloud

App Server - Domain
24 29 30
Start
App Server - Domain
26 32 26
Stop
Process Server - Domain
15 40 14
Start
Process Server - Domain
10 12 16
Stop
Web Server - Domain
80 77 84
Start
Web Server - Domain
3 1 2
Stop
App Server – Cache
30 17 23
Purge

Verdict
For PeopleSoft Application/Process/Web server domain administration activities, performance on AWS
tracked slightly faster than Oracle Cloud, while Azure performed slower.

Administration Activities
30
29.5
29
28.5
Seconds (Average)

28
27.5
27
26.5
26
25.5
25
AWS Azure Oracle

9
Database Activities
In PeopleSoft application architecture, database houses both customer transaction data and application
metadata. Read and write performance of the database is critical to overall application performance. For this
study, some of the common resource intensive tasks performed periodically in PeopleSoft database is evaluated
in all three cloud platforms.
Better performance in this area means faster response time for both online user and batch processing functions.
Timing of various database related activities is recorded in minutes.

AWS Azure Oracle Cloud

Update Statistics 1.25 30 3.25

Rebuild All Indexes 8.25 23 11.5

Large Table Backup
1 5 1
(Top 5)
DB File Backup 9 65 10

Alter Audit Scripts 69 73 62

Verdict
For database related activities, performance of Oracle Cloud and AWS showed similar results, while Azure
cloud tracked significantly slower.

Database Activities

250
Minutes (Total)

200
150
100
50
0
AWS Azure Oracle

10
Process Scheduler Activities
In PeopleSoft application architecture, Process Scheduler server is used for batch processing activities. Activities
that involve large datasets or tasks that are executed periodically without manual intervention are created as
programs are scheduled for execution in the process scheduler server. For this study, performance of process
scheduler server, while executing a sample set of processes delivered with the application of different program
types like Application Engine (AE), COBOL and Structured Query Reports (SQR) are evaluated in all three cloud
platforms.
Better performance in this area means faster response time batch processing functions.
Timing of process scheduler jobs is recorded in seconds.

AWS Azure Oracle Cloud

SQR Process 1 42 87 90

SQR Process 2 17 18 20

AE Process 1 13 31 46

AE Process 2 47 72 78

COBOL – 1 75 45 45

COBOL – 2 61 68 65

Verdict
For PeopleSoft process scheduler job executions, performance on AWS tracked slightly faster than both
Oracle Cloud and Azure.

Process Scheduler Activities

70
60
Seconds (Average)

50
40
30
20
10
0
AWS Azure Oracle

11
Online Page Access
Users of PeopleSoft access the application software using a web browser to perform their day-to-day activities.
Faster response time in rendering the requested web pages to the user is a key indicator of application
performance. For this study, performance of the application while rendering a common set of web pages is
evaluated across all three cloud platforms.
Better performance in this area means faster response time to users accessing the application.
Timing of online web page access is recorded in seconds.
AWS Azure Oracle Cloud

Fluid Tile 1 3 3 6

Fluid Tile 2 1 1 2

Fluid Tile 3 1 2 2

Fluid Tile 4 3 6 2

Fluid Tile 5 1 5 8

Analytics Dashboard 5 4 11

WorkCenter 2 3 6

Classic Page 1 4 6 9

Verdict
For the performance of online pages, performance on AWS is distinctly faster, followed by Azure and then
Oracle Cloud.

Online Page Activities

7
6
Seconds (Average)

5
4
3
2
1
0
AWS Azure Oracle

12
Search Framework
In PeopleSoft application architecture, standalone Search Servers are used to provide enhanced search capability
to customers of their application data. Elastic Search is the latest supported search technology for PeopleSoft
applications. Using the search features require a set of administrative tasks that are performed by system
administrators frequently such as indexing of the data to be searched. For this study, a full set of administrative
tasks associated with search feature is evaluated across all three cloud platforms.
Better performance in this area means faster maintenance time for search feature in PeopleSoft.
Timing of search server administration tasks are recorded in seconds.

AWS Azure Oracle Cloud

Round Trip Test 32 22 30

Deploy Search Definition
2 4 2
1
Deploy Search Definition
3 2 3
2
Deploy Search Definition
2 2 7
3
Full Index - Search
47 72 78
Definition 1
Full Index - Search
31 30 29
Definition 2
Full Index - Search
30 30 45
Definition 3
Un-deploy Search
6 30 25
Definition 1
Un-deploy Search
3 4 6
Definition 2
Un-deploy Search
1 2 6
Definition 3

Verdict
For the performance of search framework related activities, performance on AWS is distinctly faster,
followed by Azure and then Oracle Cloud.

Search Framework Activities

25
Seconds (Average)

20
15
10
5
0
AWS Azure Oracle

13
PeopleSoft Query Activities
PeopleSoft Query utility is a reporting framework delivered as part of the application and is extensively used by
both administrative and end users for their reporting needs. It is common for users to spend significant time in
reporting application data for their business needs. For this study, a sample set of reporting queries delivered with
the application is evaluated for performance across all three cloud platforms.
Better performance in this area means faster reporting of data for application users.
Timing of query reporting activities recorded in seconds.

AWS Azure Oracle Cloud

Query – 1 5 5 5

Query – 2 6 5 6

Query – 3 2 2 5

Query – 4 3 3 3

Query – 5 2 3 2

Query – 6 1 2 2

Verdict
Performance on all three clouds were closely comparable for PeopleSoft Query related activities.

Query Activities
4.5
4
3.5
Seconds (Average)

3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
AWS Azure Oracle

14
Cost of the Cloud
Many of our customers ask us to complete a feasibility study or a cost
comparison of various cloud infrastructure offerings for PeopleSoft. This
is an area of high complexity with various customer contracts that may
have vendor licensing restrictions. Putting these to the side and to assist
with our study, we made the following server purchases directly from the
vendor websites.
Below cost estimates are valid as of May 2018.

AWS Azure Oracle Cloud

Instance Cost / Hour $0.100 $0.094 $0.064

Windows Server 2012 R2 $0.092 $0.028 $0.020

Total (VM + OS) / Hour $0.192 $0.122 $0.084

Monthly Estimate (@732
$140.540 $89.300 $61.630
Hours)

Estimated Annual Cost

Using the pricing details publicly available for these cloud infrastructure platforms, provided below is an estimated
annual cost for hosting a PeopleSoft HCM infrastructure for a customer with approximately 5,000 employees.
Below cost estimates are valid as of May 2018.

AWS Azure Oracle Cloud

Estimated Annual Cost
$26,200 $22,225 $14,020
(Pay As You Go Model)

This estimate takes following aspects into consideration:

• 3-zone PeopleSoft application infrastructure model that includes Demo/Dev, Test/QA, Production/DR
• Cost of Compute (VMs), Operating Systems (a combination of Windows and Linux) and Storage
• Pricing based on ‘Pay-As-You-Go’ model across all three cloud platforms, all cloud vendors offer pricing
discounts for varying contract terms

15
CONCLUSION
Performance and Cost are at the forefront of any PeopleSoft customer’s mind as they think about migrating their
on premise application to the Cloud. When we compare Performance as a standalone metric, AWS is the front
runner with Oracle Cloud and Azure in second and third place respectively. However, when we bring the Cost
dimension into consideration, then Oracle Cloud is clearly in front and offers best value for money.
Armed with these insights, companies should be ready to consider moving their PeopleSoft application and
workloads to the Oracle Cloud and reaping the benefits of greater flexibility and more manageable costs.

17
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
In the interest of evaluating the public cloud infrastructure platforms in a like-for-like scenario, this comparison
study has consciously left out various free offerings from Oracle that are unique to running PeopleSoft
applications on Oracle Cloud. These offerings provide significant value to customers and add a different
dimension that must be a part of the overall evaluation of cloud infrastructure for PeopleSoft applications, now
and into the future. Provided below is brief summary of such offerings.
PeopleSoft Cloud Manager
A comprehensive orchestration framework built in PeopleTools platform for migrating, deploying
and administering PeopleSoft applications on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Key tools and features of PeopleSoft Cloud manager are:
• PeopleSoft Lift and Shift utility, to lift on premise 9.2 application environment to the
Oracle Cloud Storage and then “shift,” or create its replica in the cloud infrastructure.
• Define deployment templates, and provision application environments on-demand
through self-service capability, thereby fully leveraging scalability of IaaS cloud.
• Subscribe to Update Release Channels for PeopleTools and PeopleSoft applications and automate the
download of Update Images, PeopleTools releases, and PeopleSoft Release Patchsets (PRPs).
• Set up PeopleSoft Update Manager environments for maintenance application, and safely test and evaluate
new application features, PeopleTools patches and more.
Oracle Cloud Marketplace
Oracle Cloud Marketplace is an online marketplace that offers a variety of business applications for various
enterprise needs and the ever growing developer community. PeopleSoft demo applications across all products
can be deployed from Marketplace to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with just a few clicks and a fully configured
demo application is ready for use in an hour. Such agility significantly increases the pace at which customers can
receive new features and enhancements and fast tracks on-going application maintenance.
Cloud First Model
Oracle recently announced that the newer PeopleTools version of 8.57 will be generally available to all PeopleSoft
customers for use first in the Oracle Cloud. Shortly after, most likely with the third PeopleTools patch (8.57.03)
it will be available for on premise environments. There are several reasons, but the most significant is to build
awareness of the benefits of running PeopleSoft applications in the Oracle Cloud. Oracle believes that in the long
term, the best way to run PeopleSoft applications is in the Oracle cloud.

18
HOW CAN WE HELP
Strategic Consulting
PeopleSoft customers must be cognizant that large scale enterprise
implementations can be of varying architecture forms and sizes and the
evaluation of a public cloud platform specific to an enterprise needs to
take various factors into consideration.
For most organizations, while the objective of migration to cloud infrastructure
is clear, the path of cloud migration is not. Among the growing list of cloud options
and differing performance claims it can be difficult to get the necessary insights to make
critical decisions. In addition to this there is uncertainty about the readiness of many cloud offerings in hosting
business critical applications.
Find your way through the cloud chaos with the right advice at the right time, innovative frameworks and
approaches and transformative solutions. Pave the way for innovation and benefit from cloud programs tailored
to your specific business needs, on the back of our domain expertise. Our team of cloud and business experts
will help you articulate your roadmap, assess gaps, conceptualize applications, define the architecture, select the
right technology combinations and future-proof business infrastructure.

Migration Services
Moving to the cloud is no longer a question of ‘if’ for the new age enterprise. We understand that transition to
the cloud goes beyond applications to people, process, and culture. Presence of IT will help simplify this transition
to a new state of infrastructure by effectively blending cloud into your overall business. Our partnerships with
leading cloud providers and our ‘Lift and Shift’ toolkit and method helps you to transition safely, quickly and cost
effectively.
Cloud Integration
We help connect the dots for you by bringing together your on-premise applications, hybrid clouds, public
clouds and private clouds onto a single platform. Whatever be your environment, we help you build, deploy and
manage your integrations. From API and Data management to workflow integrations, our Cloud Integration
services help you create a single platform to streamline your operations, innovate faster, create consistent
customer experiences and outdo the competition.
Managed Support Services
We provide managed services for your PeopleSoft application that helps you stay in control
once your business is on the cloud. Our managed services teams monitor cloud
operations, remediate issues, track usage and costs, analyze cloud data and optimize
service levels on an ongoing basis for your business in addition to providing end
to end PeopleSoft database, application and customization management services.
AI, BOTS and RPA
Our cloud AI capabilities for PeopleSoft allow us to custom-deploy BOTS to drive
another level of automation, efficiency and user experience. With efficient and
agile cloud management in place, you can focus on maximizing innovation
and developing the competitive edge.

19
STAYING AHEAD OF THE NEW NORMAL
Get in touch with one of our Cloud specialists and we’ll devise a coherent long-term strategy
with our consulting services that maximize the cloud for your business with accelerated
time-to-market , optimized IT infrastructure, virtualized processes, increased collaboration,
and enhanced customer experience.

Contact us

www.peoplesoft.presenceofit.com

[email protected]

About Presence of IT
Presence of IT is an Oracle Platinum partner and leading consulting organization in Oracle PeopleSoft
Solutions. We provide thought leadership, strategy, process improvement, software and cloud selection
advice, implementation, hosting and operational support services to many of the world’s largest private
and public sector organizations. Our strength is in the excellence of our people and our focus is on our
clients. This focus has seen us evolve into a global organization to better support our customers in their
respective markets, the world over.