Issue #64 – 4th December 2013
News and Latest Developments
Australian University building PeopleSoft Private Cloud 
Australian National University (comprised of 8 universities) is building a private cloud for hosting its PeopleSoft applications (HCM, Student Admin and Financials) – alongside other systems.
IBM and Bridgestone wrangle over failed ERP
A legal dispute between Bridgestone tyres and IBM over a failed ERP implementation has escalated into an acrimonious public war of words. Bridgestone hired IBM to rollout SAP, however after spending $75 million it failed upon going live. Bridgestone was forced to hire SAP directly to fix problems that IBM allegedly created. Bridgestone filed a lawsuit against IBM for $600 million, claiming $200 million in business losses and treble damages for fraud.
CRM 9.1 Patch Bundle 15 released
Functional
Upgrading to 9.2 part 3 – Eliminate Customisations
Shamus Kahl (Senior Practice Director, Oracle Consulting) opines that elimination of customisations reduces complexity and enables easier take-up of newer functionality. It’s a sentiment that few would argue with, however very few clients go-live on a fully vanilla system and the opportunity to create carefully written and well documented improvements is something most clients deem essential.
Automatic Case Creation in HR Helpdesk
Technical
Compare Reports – Generating HTML Output 
Wade ‘Smart Panda’ Coombs talks us through the process of generating HTML Output from your Compare Reports and shares how he makes the output available to others on the project. Wade is also starting up a newsletter of his own which you can sign up for on his site.
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Reading
US Police Force pay Bitcoin Ransom 
Massachusetts police have admitted to paying a bitcoin ransom after being infected by the Cryptolocker ransomware. The virus encrypts your hard-drive and demands a ransom to return your data. The choice is either to pay up or revert to a backup, which embarrasses those without recent backups ….
Non-Creepy Networking
Jessica Hische has a really interesting and well written post about how to network effectively and how to not ‘be creepy’. Much of it comes down to just being genuinely interested in the person rather than what they can offer you, it’s still a great read though.
The secret of the Cold War Nuclear launch codes
Watching
Paco Aubrejuan (SVP of the PeopleSoft product line) discusses the changes made to the product delivery model for the 9.2 releases and beyond. It’s really interesting to hear Paco speak and to explain the thinking behind the changes. It’s well worth watching.
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