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Optimize Your Migration to SAP BusinessObjects BI4

The 4.2 release of SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence (BI) solutions will be available in a few

weeks. This will lead more and more customers to invest time, resources, and money in migrating

to this latest major release. Migrations are generally the occasion to deploy new solutions

available for SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions suite; to seize new opportunities and/or serve

previously under-served users in the business. Doing a Migration right the first time is the key to

optimizing time, costs, and ultimately deliver more value to the organization. I have personally

been working in the BOBJ world for the last 20 years. During that time, I have run dozens of

migrations from BO3 to BO4, BO4 to BO5 or BO6 and then, from legacy versions to XIR2, XI3 and

finally XI3 to BI4, and have been involved in several beta programs. In a nutshell, migration

projects, and more specifically related challenges, remain the same and have even become

harder to overcome, making it difficult to continue adopting BI in the organization.

We, at GB&SMITH, as SAP technology partners, have built expertise and developed technologies

that have proved to be useful when engaging in migration projects. Hundreds of clients

managing 1 million users have been using our solutions for the last 8 years. Our applications make

their migration projects easier, faster, safer, and most importantly, cheaper!

Let’s have a look – basically, we can find ten major steps in a migration project.

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Step 1: Preparing your migration

This preparation step consists in documenting your existing deployment (could be several

deployments to merge into BI4.2, for instance). This will allow you to get a big picture of the source

platform and start evaluating the scope of the migration itself. 360Eyes will provide a snapshot of

your current deployment (in-depth analysis of any universes, CMS info, or more generally

metadata, e.g.: starting with webi reports and going down to variables, functions whatever the

data source may be; unv, unx, BEX query, SQL script, etc.).

Step 2: Cleaning and tracking inactivity

This preparation is amongst the most important steps. It consists in optimizing the content to be

migrated. At this point, the following questions should be considered (beware: this list is not

exhaustive):

Do I need to migrate documents that have not been read and/or used for months?

Do I need to keep all the instances stored on my system? Is there any option to remove the oldest

and/or unused ones?

Do I have any duplicate reports (different names and/or different locations) on my system? Can

I migrate or test only one of these?

Do I need to migrate the in-boxes of all users? What about unread documents?

Can I document all my current authorization settings, security and scheduling jobs?

The less content you migrate, the easier, faster and cheaper the migration will be, ultimately

making your target SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 system easier to maintain and faster to back-up.

All those valuable insights are provided by the canned 360Eyes webi reports. 360View will help

you bulk-delete unused or deprecated content. Before starting a full clean-up, do not forget to

back everything up, if ever a single-object rollback were needed. 360Plus allows performing this

backup operation as well as restoring selectively, fetching a deleted object from the recycle bin

and also performing rollbacks.

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Step 3: Optimizing

A migration project is also the best moment to optimize your deployment. Consider the following:

A. Can I optimize SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence reports using hundreds of report

variables and numerous data providers?

B. Can I fast-track SAP BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence conversion to SAP

BusinessObjects Web Intelligence or list any incomplete report conversion?

C. For instance, the query-stripping feature allows you to detect useless variables and

universe objects in your documents. This then allows removing them, thus making

conversion from SAP BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence to SAP BusinessObjects Web

Intelligence smoother while ensuring a higher success rate. These insights are provided

by the canned 360Eyes webi reports. 360View then allows bulk-converting webis from

unv to unx. (https://youtu.be/MaZ6lkE5Nvk)

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Step 4: Defining your license pool

When migrating to BI4.2 you may reconsider your license pool, switching from a CPU-based one

(or other) to CSBL. Having some hindsight on the actual session usage over the last few years may

be valuable to determine the most suitable amount of required licenses (mixing named and

CSBL).

http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog/2013/01/30/bi-platform-licensing-basics-csbls-

and-named-users

All this essential information is provided by the canned 360Eyes webi reports.

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Step 5: Impact analysis of a calculation engine change

Every now and then, SAP releases updates of the Webi calculation engine.

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-39973

I have been involved in several worldwide corporate migration projects at the occasion of which

such calculation engine updates could become blocking issues. Indeed, having an accurate

overview of how many Webis are going to be impacted is very valuable. With 360Eyes this can

be taken up a notch! The unique 360Eyes query stripping functionality allows detecting useless

variables in documents. This effectively highlights all the Webi documents impacted by the

engine change just by using a filter! This also reduces the actual number of webis impacted by

this change. E.g.: let’s say that, in the first place, 360Eyes detects 1000 impacted reports. Going

deeper allows highlighting that 30% of these reports make use of the modified calculation engine

function in useless variables or formulas. Eventually, only 700 of those reports need to be checked

(instead of 1000). These insights are provided by default in the canned 360Eyes webi reports, no

matter the datasource: unv, unx or even a BEX query!

See below a concrete use case involving a corporate deployment (60 000 active BOBJ users

around the globe): 360Eyes was used to apply a BusinessObjects Service Pack and ensure no side

effect would occur!

http://scn.sap.com/people/cgnodtke/blog/2014/04/17/how-to-find-the-documents-impacted-

by-calculation-engine-changes

Step 6: Comparing source and target

Coping with the classic migration challenge: Should you freeze your source production

environment during the migration process?

Imagine your migration project was launched three months ago, and you are now planning on

going live for the entire organization in just a few weeks. But wait a minute… what about your

source SAP BusinessObjects XI environment?

What about the new content created or modified in the course of the migration process

(instances, security, users, variables in webis, etc.)? Should you, and could you, freeze the source

environment during the migration project? Or even better, how could you synchronize your XI

source with your SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 target in that interval?

What about keeping snapshots of your deployment, restoring any of them and performing a

rollback if needed? Imagine you launched your migration project on September 1st, after

cleaning and auditing everything by running Steps 2 and 3 (as previously explained here). Now

it is October 1st and the right moment to take a first snapshot of the source XI environment, deploy

BI 4.2 to a few pilot users, perform technical tests, convert some reports, and collect feedback

from these key users.

Everything looks good and you decide to deploy SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 to everyone on

December 1st as planned. Before doing so, though, just take a new snapshot of the source

system, compare it with the snapshot taken on October 1st, and highlight changes, like a new

alerter in a SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence report, a new publication, a modified universe

object, or security settings.

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You can then replicate all these changes to the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 target system and go

live without missing all the changes applied to your XI source when performing the previous

migration step! The ability to compare target and source at different times is a standard feature

of 360Eyes. 360Plus can help you promote modified content or new versions from the target to

the source.

Step 7: Automating non-regression testing

This is the most time-consuming part of the project. It is probably the least valued part BUT also

the most important one, since end users must rely on new outputs. Plus, Business Objects can be

used for sensitive data (Financial communication, Healthcare Data …). Depending on

circumstances, such as regulation considerations, you may need to ensure that there is no

regression. Regression testing is definitely tricky and risky if handled manually! Being able to

automate wide-scale non-regression testing is a no brainer! 360Bind allows you to automate this

for safer and faster migration to BI4.2. It enables comparing output report data (tabs, charts but

also images, colors, fonts, going down to pixel scale!). If, in parallel of your migration project, bulk-

switching webis unv to unx using 360View is also performed (Step 3), regression testing is a clear

necessity!

I witnessed frozen migration projects because of this very sensitive step! Everything was perfectly

fine from a pure technical perspective, but not enough time had been given to end users in order

to run all those tests. Using 360Bind assists in keeping track of the migration process and, above

all, makes it safe!

In other scenarios, there is no way to outsource this project step, since data is too sensitive to be

processed externally!

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Step 8: Going l ive: flexible promotion strategy

Moving to BI4 can become challenging depending on the promotion strategy. Import wizards or

LCM in some scenarios can be limited. I remember, when I started almost 20 years ago, that my

client was using Control-M as their Enterprise Job Scheduler. It consists in a conductor allowing

linking different IT workflows (loading from the data-warehouse and running scheduled Business

Objects jobs). A part of the IT team was very frustrated with our platforms since there was no way

of linking Control-M to BOBJ scheduling nor to backup processes. No professional way to deal

with exit codes, logs, etc. We all knew we could use the Document Agent Server file watcher

tool, but it was just a TOP, and then Control-M would lose control over BOBJ scheduling. Another

scenario would be unrestricted content bulk-promotion across platforms. These scenarios can be

carried out by using the 360Plus promotion features: via a simple and user-friendly drag and drop

promotion operation, or by using the scheduled promotion feature. We, at GB&SMITH, bridge the

gap between any Enterprise Job Scheduler (like CTRLM, $U or $Universe, UC4, TWS, etc.) and

Business Objects (for backup, promotion, bursting, etc.) from XIR2 onwards!

Step 9: Going live setup: compliant security

Back in 2005, security was a banned word @BOBJ. Everybody can remember that migrating to

XIR2 required another step: redefining security from scratch and switching from a user-centric

implementation (by formerly using Supervisor) to an object-centric approach within the CMC.

That was a big bang! Actually, it was such an important move that I toured worldwide @BOUG

or conferences from down under to the US west coast in order to present the new Business

Objects Xir2 security concepts as well as security migration challenges.

http://www.slideshare.net/sgoiffon/360view-xi3-new-security-concepts

https://michaelwelter.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/boe-xi-3-x-security-made-easy/

From that precise moment, my associate Alexandre Biegala and I decided to found GB&SMITH

to provide an alternative to the CMC. We invented the matrix system for implementing and

documenting security (we own several US Patents for this technology). Everything started from

that specific need, and then evolved by listening to clients' and prospects' needs. As a result, we

are now offering 7 products covering all the common needs for streamlining Business Objects,

focusing on Governance, Risk and Compliance, backup solutions, promotion, migration,

metadata, license compliance, bursting and regression testing.

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Because security remains one of the backbones of any deployment, managing sensitive data

requires permanent control over security itself.

The Matrix-based solution is the only way to comply with all regulations such as SOX, Basel, FISMA,

HIPAA, etc.

https://www.asug.com/discussions/docs/DOC-41963/version

Loosely implemented security can eventually leave your resources exposed to business users who

should normally not have access to them. As I am used to saying (from my 10-year BI admin

experience): if someone is able to read the payroll for the entire company staff as result of a

security implementation error, they will never inform the administrator. Imagine if they could read

your own payroll!

Step 10: Going l ive: robust backup strategy

Setting up a powerful and reliable Business Objects backup strategy is a tricky task. Implementing

a Business Objects disaster and recovery strategy is mandatory (for instance by backing up the

whole BOBJ server and CMS database). This can be useful to start over again from scratch (in

case of full BO server crash). BUT such a backup strategy is not suitable for selective rollback

operations (like restoring a previous version of a given universe), or when restoring deleted

objects.

A common situation is as follows: an end-user (Finance VP) accidentally deletes a personal

sensitive document. They need it at once for their monthly C-level meeting. So, they contact the

BOBJ IT team and request the document to be restored. Two standard answers can be given

there: either there is no backup of personal documents, or the IT team needs a few days to use

the full backup in order to restore the document. This sad reality is the case for 90% of current

BOBJ deployments!

So, performing a full backup is mandatory, however, this is effective for disaster and recovery

only, but not for restoring selectively (or if used as a recycle bin). Incidentally, such processes may

have a strong impact on the platform availability, especially when running cold backups (for BO

disaster and recovery). In the case of worldwide deployments, this may lead to stopping the

environment for 2 hours, therefore impacting AsiaPac users, for instance.

360Plus is the professional solution for setting up a very powerful backup strategy. Upon first run,

a full backup is performed. Then, every night the tool simply runs delta and dynamic backups.

Thus, there is no impact on the platform itself, allowing high availability (24/7). As a result, you are

then able to roll back to any previous version of any object (personal documents, security

settings, users, universe connections, etc.). Likewise, you can restore any deleted object thanks

to the 360Plus Recycle Bin. BI4.2 is bringing us the recycle bin, but for corporate documents only!

Thus, in the previously evoked scenario, 360Plus is the only option! And what about instances,

universes, security, users, etc.? From a strictly technical standpoint, the risk for a user to mistakenly

delete a corporate document is very low (close to zero). Indeed, nearly no one has the required

delete rights on corporate folders. GB&SMITH has provided a recycle bin for any object type since

XIR2 onwards! 360Plus also comes with versioning and Promotion (Step 8)

https://rbranger.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/backup-recovery-in-bo-4-0/

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Conclusion

GB&SMITH's 360Suite is the Swiss army knife solution to help you optimize time and efforts,

ultimately ensuring substantial money savings when migrating your SAP BusinessObjects BI

deployment from XI or BI4.x to BI 4.2.

We estimate up to 80% time and money savings by using our solutions!

Post-migration assistance is no longer needed thanks to our 360Suite solutions.

Ultimately, keeping control over your platforms on a daily basis is essential in order to avoid going

through the aforementioned steps in future migration projects. I can still remember one of my

clients talking about how intricate and complex his platform was (fetching new documents, users,

instances and thinking about clean-up was an “impenetrable obstacle” for him). You had better

check your platform on a daily basis!

All the good practices mentioned above should be applied when migrating to XI3 or BI4.1 as

well!

360Suite products, also ensure a better daily experience for your SAP BusinessObjects BI users.

Organizations also need to comply with multiple regulation (FISMA, SOX, HIPAA, etc.) and must

know at all times, who has been granted access to given resources, who is enabled to track

dormant users, etc.

Companies have hard time monitoring and documenting rights accurately (for instance:

inherited and double-inherited rights). As a result, the risk of leaving security breaches open is

dramatically high.

360Suite provides you with the ability to secure and control BO deployments more efficiently.

Over 1 Million users have chosen our solutions!