The Challenge: A Mission-Critical Platform Becomes a Business Risk

For a leading university, the PeopleSoft platform was at the epicenter of daily operations. Human resources, finance, student records, and administrative workflows — all depended on it. As long as it worked, it stayed invisible. However, when it began to falter, the operational core was disrupted, and the impact rippled through the whole organization.

The first signals were familiar to most enterprise leaders.

Performance slowed down in small but persistent ways
Processes that once completed in a few minutes began timing out. Faculty experience inconsistent access to payroll information. HR teams ran into freezes during peak enrollment periods. Financial reports that used to finish overnight began slipping into business hours, hampering decision-making. Measured response times were down more than 40 percent from baseline.

The middleware layer had become increasingly complex over time
The PeopleSoft environment relied on a tightly connected stack that included WebLogic application servers, Tuxedo middleware, Elastic Search, and Linux infrastructure. Without deep expertise across these layers, the internal IT team struggled to isolate root causes. Integration failures between systems became frequent, often requiring emergency fixes and temporary workarounds.

Patching and updates weren’t happening
Critical CPU patches and PeopleSoft Update Manager releases were deferred repeatedly. As a consequence, security exposure increased, new features stayed out of reach, and technical debt continued to grow. By the time leadership stepped in, more than a year of patches remained unapplied.

No dedicated expertise existed in-house
The internal IT team knew the environment well enough to keep it running, but not well enough to confidently improve it. Specialized PeopleSoft skills were spread thin or missing altogether. Tasks like tuning performance, resolving integration failures, or introducing automation competed with daily operational demands.

The business impact was as clear as day.

• System downtime created significant lost productivity across administrative staff, faculty, and students.
• Integration failures created manual workarounds consuming approximately 120 staff hours weekly.
• Performance degradation reduced administrative efficiency by an estimated 18%.
• Security vulnerabilities from missed patches exposed the university to potential compliance violations under FERPA and data breach risks, affecting thousands of employees and students.

The clock was already ticking. The university leadership needed immediate stabilization combined with long-term optimization, without the multi-year timeline and massive investment required to build internal expertise from scratch.

The Solution: Specialized Expertise Deployed with Surgical Precision

The university engaged Infojini to nip the problem in the bud. The memo was clear: stabilize the PeopleSoft platform quickly, eliminate risks, and put the internal team back in control of operational pipelines; however, without expanding headcount or introducing unnecessary change.

It wasn’t an easy ask, but it was the kind of problem we’re built to solve.

Phase 1: Immediate Stabilization and Assessment (Weeks 1-4)
The engagement began with a full health check of the PeopleSoft environment. This included WebLogic configurations, Tuxedo performance settings, and Elastic Search indexing. The most critical bottlenecks were addressed first, resulting in noticeable performance improvements for users within the first two weeks.
Urgent CPU patches were applied using Change Assistant to ensure controlled deployment and safe rollback. At the same time, baseline performance metrics were established for key business processes, giving the IT team clear visibility into system health for the first time.

Phase 2: Middleware Optimization and Integration Repair (Weeks 5-12)
With stability restored, our attention shifted to deeper optimizations. WebLogic servers were tuned and built to better manage peak loads during enrollment and financial close cycles. Plus, Tuxedo configurations were adjusted to remove transaction bottlenecks that had caused frequent HR process timeouts.

Next, Integration Broker was rebuilt to resolve long-standing connectivity issues between PeopleSoft and external systems such as learning platforms, payment gateways, and third-party HR tools. Elastic Search indexes were reconfigured to improve search performance across the platform. Automated monitoring was also introduced using Linux-native tools alongside PeopleSoft diagnostics. This provided early warnings for performance dips and integration failures, reducing the need for reactive firefighting.

Phase 3: Platform Updates and DevOps Automation (Weeks 13-24)
The Infojini team then tackled the patch backlog. Fourteen months of accumulated PUM updates were applied using PeopleSoft Deployment Packages, with each update being tested in non-production environments before being promoted to production, ensuring business operations continued without disruption.

DevOps practices were introduced using Puppet and Ansible, enabling infrastructure-as-code and reducing manual errors. All custom scripts and configurations were moved into Git-based version control, creating clear audit trails and faster rollback options when needed.

The next step involved Linux administration standards that were also tightened, improving resource utilization, backup reliability, and overall security across PeopleSoft servers.

Phase 4: Knowledge Transfer and Sustainable Operations (Weeks 25-30)
Throughout the engagement, Infojini worked alongside the university’s internal IT team as its true extension. Every configuration change was documented, runbooks were created for routine maintenance, and hands-on training sessions were conducted. The goal was not just to fix the platform, but to leave the team confident in managing it going forward.

The Impact: From Crisis Management to Strategic Asset

The transformation delivered quantifiable results across every dimension of platform performance and operational efficiency:

Platform performance improved dramatically:

• Significant reduction in average system response time across critical business processes
• Page load times dramatically decreased for commonly accessed functions
• Near-perfect uptime achieved, eliminating costly unplanned outages
• Peak load handling capacity substantially increased, accommodating enrollment surges without degradation
• Database query performance greatly improved through optimized middleware configurations

Integration reliability transformed operations:

• Integration failures reduced from multiple weekly incidents to occasional monthly occurrences
• Automated data synchronization eliminated substantial staff hours weekly that were previously spent on manual workarounds
• Real-time integration with external systems enabled new capabilities like instant transcript delivery and automated payment processing
• Error detection and resolution time significantly decreased from hours to minutes

Security posture and compliance strengthened:

• Critical CPU patches applied, closing security vulnerabilities
• Platform was brought up-to-par with all PUM updates, reducing technical debt
• FERPA compliance risks eliminated through proper security configurations
• Audit-ready documentation created for all system configurations and changes
• Automated monitoring provided real-time security alerts and anomaly detection

Operational efficiency gains unlocked capacity:

• Administrative staff productivity notably increased due to improved system performance
• IT team time spent on PeopleSoft firefighting substantially reduced from extensive weekly hours to minimal maintenance
• Deployment time for system changes dramatically reduced through DevOps automation
• Mean time to resolution (MTTR) for platform issues significantly decreased from hours to under two hours
• Backup and disaster recovery processes automated, dramatically reducing execution time

Strategic capabilities enabled:

• Stable platform foundation started supporting digital transformation initiatives previously on hold
• DevOps practices created templates for modernizing other legacy systems
• Internal IT team were empowered with skills to maintain platform independently
• Performance headroom enabled new integrations and functionality without infrastructure expansion
• Data-driven monitoring provided predictive insights for proactive management
• Platform optimization extended useful life by an estimated 3-5 years, deferring major replacement costs

The Bottom Line: Specialized Expertise Delivers Exponential Returns

By bringing in specialized PeopleSoft expertise of Infojini at a critical point, the university turned a destabilizing platform environment into a strong growth lever. The engagement delivered everything the university needed: fast stabilization, thoughtful optimization, and long-term operational confidence, without the cost or disruption of rebuilding internal capabilities from scratch.

Just as importantly, the university avoided a full platform replacement. By fixing what mattered and optimizing what already existed, they preserved institutional knowledge, maintained continuity, and gained years of additional value from their PeopleSoft investment.

For education leaders and enterprise IT teams managing complex ERP environments, the takeaway spoke for itself. When specialized platforms start to lose momentum, timely expert intervention prevents deeper risk and delivers returns far beyond the initial investment.

Our partner chose deliberate action over constant crisis response and reshaped a mission-critical system into a reliable foundation for the future.