PeopleSoft's Pure Internet Architecture (PIA) has multiple tiers of hardware and software. While a multi-tier architecture offers scalability, it also makes monitoring and diagnosis harder.
Since there are inter-dependencies between the tiers, a problem in one tier can impact all the other tiers. An administrator's challenge is how quickly he/she can identify where the cause of a PeopleSoft application slowdown lies (i.e., in the application? network? firewall? server? web? database?).
Proactive monitoring, accurate diagnosis, and lower time to repair can improve the experience for PeopleSoft users.