Issue #40 – 8th May 2013
News and Latest Developments
Oracle advances on ‘Worlds Strongest Companies’ list
Every year a division of Credit Suisse creates a list of the Worlds Strongest 500 companies. This year Oracle rose from 357th place in 2012 to 86th. This result will be particularly pleasing for Larry Ellison given the fall of Microsoft (down 6 places to 216th), IBM (down 39 places to 66th), Google (down 61 to 147th) and HP (plummeting to 394th place from 19th last year).
Ex-Employee Busted for Tampering with ERP System 
In a shining example of why it’s always a good idea to disable accounts of terminated employees, an ex-worker accessed his previous employer’s ERP system and ‘had a little fun’.
Functional
The Value of PeopleSoft 9.2? Return on Investment
Richard George from Cedar Crestone looks at the cost of upgrading to v9.2, the benefits gained from the new functionality, and then calculates the ROI for three different adoption scenarios.
Technical
Scripting the move from VirtualBox to VMWare
Following on from his post last week showing how to convert VirtualBox instances to VMWare, Nicolas Gasparotto shows how he’s automated the process to make the adoption of the once-every-8-weeks instances even slicker. He’s also documented here fixes for some of the issues that he’s encountered.
Secure Enterprise Search – What’s the Big Deal?
Anoop Savio from the My Tech Speak blog has posted his presentation on Secure Enterprise Search. Many of the slides are quite visual so it would have been interesting to read/hear the commentary that went alongside them, but as a guide to the architecture and config necessary this is a decent slide pack.
PeopleSoft and Web Browsers 
The topic of which Tools version supports which browser can be confusing at times. Succeed have produced a straightforward (and free) guide clarifying matters.
Reading
The Oracle Assessment
A long, but thought-provoking piece by Brian Sommer of ZDNet on the progress Oracle has made, the direction it is taking in the near future, and where it should be looking a little further out.
Does it sometimes take a while for your meetings to come to an agreement? If so, it might be worth giving the McDonalds Theory a try. Note: this is unlikely to be endorsed by McDonalds in any way.
Watching
History of the HR Industry with HCM Fellow, Row Henson
We’d heard so many mention Row Henson as a mentor/inspiration, but had never heard her speak until this video. She gives a great potted history of HR – the move from Personnel to HCM, and how technology has been a major driver in this change.
Invest in Innovation: Upgrade to Oracle’s PeopleSoft 9.2
A great promotional video on the improvements in PeopleSoft 9.2, concluding with some impressive statistics on PeopleSoft usage. It’s light on screenshots and details but you can get these elsewhere. The video does have a loud/pumping soundtrack so headphones are recommended in the office!
And Finally…
Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 30 
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – now retired – is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. He has written a list of ‘life lessons’, including an interesting slant on watching TV vs reading books.
The PeopleSoft Weekly newsletter 