Issue #66 – 8th January 2014
Succeed would like to wish you all a Happy and Healthy 2014!
News and Latest Developments
California sues SAP over failed Payroll Project 
SAP has been slapped with a lawsuit by California’s state controller over a payroll software implementation the office says cost $250m, but has never calculated even one employee’s pay correctly.
Panorama Consulting 2013 ERP Report
Each year Panorama Consulting conduct a survey on the state of the ERP implementations in the last 12 months. It’s always an interesting read as it compares the mega-vendors and their proportion of bid wins, the amount of projects that overspend or overrun and the slightly more subjective ‘customer satisfaction’. It’s unfortunate thatPeopleSoft projects are lumped in with EBS etc into a single Oracle bucket rather than broken out, but it’s useful nonetheless. Interesting stats include the platform that the new systems are implemented on (On Premise – 61%, SaaS – 14%, Cloud – 12%).
New Releases
Legislative Update for Global Payroll United Kingdom, Mexico and Australia
Oracle have released updates to GP UK for the changes announced by the Chancellor in his Autumn statement (which become effective on 6th April). There have also been updates for GP Mexico and GP Australia.
Functional
How to Effectively Write PeopleSoft Queries
Brooke Lindsey has written a post on the Animato blog with a quick introduction on how to effectively write PeopleSoft Queries.
Creating a Launch Pad Experience within PeopleSoft
This is a post by Bharathi Mani on the PeopleTools blog, but it’s not a particularly technical post. Instead it’s a great showcase – with lots of screenshots – showing different ways that you could display your landing and transactional pages.
Technical
The Minimum Number of Recycling Server Processes 
The UK’s David Kurtz has an infrastructure related post on the minimum number of certain processes within the PeopleSoft App Server, and how it has changed in recent Tools versions.
Reading
10 bizarre objects found in Cool offices
The BBC website has a run-through of 10 quirkily designed offices and their unusual features. Some seem to be as a result of careful research, whereas others just sound cool.
Into the Bitcoin Mines
Into the Bitcoin Mines 
Some people are making a lot of money from harvesting Bitcoins. How does it work, how much can one make and why are they mining in Iceland?
Why Wearable Tech Will Be as Big as the Smartphone
A long, but interesting look into the future of wearable devices. It’s not all about smart-watches, but NFC rings, ski goggles, bracelets and brooches too. Why do some succeed, but others fall by the wayside?
Infographic
The Gizmodo blog rounds up the best Data Visualisations of 2013. It’s quite US-centric, but some are really quite interesting (for example, the states from which the most ‘hateful’ tweets originate) while others are more flippant (the states which use “you guys” vs those that use “‘y’all”, or the popularity of various pizza chains).
Watching
A short video with customers running PeopleSoft on the Exa* systems discuss the improvements in performance that they’ve been able to achieve.
And Finally…
This is a great feel-good story to start the year. Johnny Barnes is a 90-year-old former electrician and bus driver who lives in Bermuda, and he’s become so well known locally for being happy and welcoming to residents and tourists alike that he’s had a statue erected in his honour!
While most of North America tweets pictures of frozen streets and lakes, we like this video (spotted by NextDraft). What happens when you jump on a frozen trampoline?
The PeopleSoft Weekly newsletter 