"Faster, Simpler, Smarter" - Irfan Khan's TechEd 2016 Customer Keynote and Well Managed BI

In his TechEd 2016 keynote address, Irfan Khan, CTO for SAP Global Customer Operations (GC0), marked the twentieth anniversary and spoke with customers, asking them:

"How can you become faster, simpler, smarter, in the context of your digital journey?"

He noted that Moore's Law continues to be in force as memory and computing power double every 12 to 18 months, and that this growth was part of what was fueling disruptive times in the world of data science. SAP BusinessObjects Cloud was designed to coalesce BI, predictive, and planning to a single platform in response to these disruptive times.

Irfan's emphasis was on the SAP BW/4HANA platform, and he used the "data lake" concept to talk about not just the volume of data the HANA platform was capable of containing, but also how available that data was for analysis and decision-making. Unlike the standard data warehouse or data mart, HANA is not limited to aggregated data. When you query or run an algorithm against HANA, you are not querying merely the rolled-up summaries of the data, but the entire data lake itself, meaning the Devil can't hide in the details.

If you are a BI platform manager or administrator, you know the volume of your data and the complexity of your information requirements are growing at an ever-increasing pace, and in parallel with Moore's Law. Irfan told us that "Every aspect of our environment is changing. We are entering a digital environment." For BI people, this sea change manifests itself in the growth of real-time and ad hoc business intelligence, and the corresponding importance of proactive BI administration.

However, this growth in the importance of BI to the enterprise, and the need for BI administrators to work "faster, simpler, smarter," does not necessarily come with a corresponding growth in available resources, so in order for BI platform managers to work faster and simpler, they most definitely need to find ways to work smarter.

APOS Systems has been the source for BI solutions to help SAP customers running SAP BusinessObjects achieve "faster, simpler, smarter" BI platform management and administration capabilities, or what we like to call Well Managed BI. These solutions let you:

• Formulate deep knowledge of your system, so you know what is happening, why it is happening, and who is making it happen
• Bulk manage objects, schedules and instances to improve service and liberate your resources for higher-value activities
• Implement an advanced content storage strategy to protect your content, and to meet internal governance and regulatory compliance requirements
• Employ advanced query governance to ensure your BI system makes the most of its data connectivity
• Perform precision content delivery to ensure the right content gets to the right people at the right time in the right format with the right security
• Streamline migration and upgrade processes and automate report object and instance testing
• Expand data connectivity options to leverage existing data sources and calculations
• Expand Analysis for Office scheduling, instance management, document backup and archive, impact analysis, and use Analysis for Office as a data source for other SAP BI tools

For more information on how APOS can help your BI platform management become faster, simpler, and smarter, visit our Well Managed BI Solutions page.

How Chaotic Is Your SAP BI Environment?

Tomorrow, March 9, at 10 am and 2 pm ET, APOS Systems will host a webinar on this topic:

Reducing SAP BI System Chaos with Deep System Analysis

If you can't attend, register for the webinar anyway and we'll send you a link to the recorded webinar so you can enjoy and share it at your leisure.

Chaos is never a neutral term. It carries so much cultural baggage that it may not have been the most appropriate naming convention for a scientific theory, and you'd think scientists might have learned this lesson and not nicknamed the Higgs boson the "God particle." I suppose we all have our blind spots.

Chaos Theory is the field of study within mathematics that studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions — a response popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. When we say such systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions, we are saying that the slightest variation in those conditions can cause drastic changes to downstream events. Such systems are generally characterized by:

• High volume of inputs: the number of elements interacting within a chaotic system is so large that it is virtually impossible to account for them all without extreme computing power.
• Nonlinearity: complexity of inputs makes determination of cause and effect very difficult, if not impossible
• Dynamism: it's a moving target; before you can analyze the state of a chaotic system, the state has changed.

Chaos Theory is one of the most interdisciplinary of mathematical studies, because chaos is so prevalent in the world. In fact, the science of chaos started with an attempt to model and predict weather. Those studies started in the 1960s, with impressive, but limited, results. (You can usually get a pretty good idea of tomorrow's weather, but looking five days out, all bets are off.)

BI Chaos

A high volume of inputs, nonlinearity and dynamism are characteristics of many of the BI systems we see. BI Chaos is characterized by a high-volume, nonlinear and dynamic state obscuring a clear understanding and deep knowledge of the system, its dependencies and its future states, and creating a barrier to proactive and preventive management and targeted administrative action.

Of course, we are using chaos as a metaphor for the difficulties the BI team has in administering the BI system, but if you've faced some of the challenges that BI administrators face on a daily basis, I think you'll agree it is a very appropriate metaphor.

A BI system may be chaotic if it is difficult to form a clear understanding or a deep knowledge of its component parts. For various reasons, such knowledge is obscured, making it very difficult to manage the system proactively or preventively.

Chaos is less of a problem if you have an unlimited pool of administrative resources, but for the rest of us, this lack of predictability may frequently place the administration team in a reactive mode. Chaos may prevent your team from entering into a proactive mode and acting in a timely manner on evolving requirements and expectations.

BI Chaos - Feature or Bug?

BI Chaos happens because your system is performing the function for which it was designed. In a very real way, you are a victim of your own success. If you are not experiencing chaos within your system, you have to ask yourself whether you are realizing the full potential of the system.

If you want to reduce, prevent and manage the chaos in your BI deployment, you have to start by recognizing that chaos is the rule, not the exception. It's a feature, not a bug.

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence Update Webinar with Frank Prabel & Gregory Botticchio

When: January 28, 2016, 10 am & 1 pm ET

APOS Systems will host this upcoming webinar featuring SAP Web Intelligence subject matter experts Frank Prabel and Gregory Botticchio. Web Intelligence is an integral part of the BI platform, which forms a trusted foundation for decision making across the enterprise. Join Frank and Gregory as they discuss new Web Intelligence features and the road ahead.

Features under discussion include:

•  Backend integration - direct access to SAP HANA, SAP HANA online mode
• Shared Elements - the ability to save report elements in the CMS repository for re-use
• Commentary - the ability to add, view, remove comments on Web Intelligence document
• Visualization Extensions - the ability to implement third-party visualizations

Please join us for this informative webinar.

Register for this webinar…

The webinar brings us full circle from last year's WIS Q & A event in which numerous SAP luminaries answered real-time questions about Web Intelligence, Lumira and the SAP Convergence Stratetgy.

Over the past year, we have expanded on many of the questions and answers delivered at the Q & A event in a series of blog posts on SCN, and recently we published the first of two summary posts on sap.com.

ICD-10 and Beyond - What Are the Key Drivers for Healthcare BI in mid-2015?

There are some consistent themes arising among our US healthcare customers. A common one is that BI platform managers and administrators in the healthcare industry are becoming more proactive in order to resolve numerous pressing issues.

There are regulatory issues (HIPAA, HITECH) and ICD-10 adoption issues There are issues with BI/EHR integration and with change management. And, of course, there is the ever-present issue of resource constraints.

One of our larger healthcare customers recently said they have managed to complete ICD-10 testing and adoption well before the October 2015 deadline, but I wonder, how is the rest of the industry doing? What is the current state of ICD-10 readiness?

In a 2014 survey on ICD-10 readiness by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA):

65% of respondents indicated that they could begin end-to-end testing prior to the fourth quarter of 2015, when compliance is set to begin. Of these, a majority (63%) will be ready to conduct testing in 2014, while the rest will wait until 2015.  Ten percent of all respondents currently have no plans to conduct end-to-end testing, and 17 percent don’t know when their organization will be ready for testing.

In general, the larger the healthcare organization, the more likely it is to be prepared, and to have end-to-end testing either already completed or in their plans prior to the adoption deadline. And the smaller the healthcare organization, the more likely it is to have resource constraints and knowledge limitations:

Organizations with no plans to conduct end-to-end testing often cited a lack of knowledge as the reason to forego testing (36%). Nearly half (45%) of these organizations are clinics/physician practices, possibly indicating a knowledge gap around ICD-10 implementation and testing for those organizations with fewer resources. By contrast, only two of the acute care hospitals responding to the survey had no plans for end-to-end testing.

The pyramids of Egypt are testament to what can be accomplished with a nearly unlimited supply of cheap or free labor, and larger healthcare organizations have been able to apply the necessary resources and the necessary knowledge to meet the deadline, but what about the rest of us? How can smaller healthcare organizations make the transition to ICD-10 comfortably?

When you don't have the resources, working smarter is the only practical alternative, and working smarter requires both a deeper knowledge of your deployment than is commonly available, as well as the ability to streamline and automate many of your BI workflows.

Lamont Parraway of LifeBridge Health joins us this afternoon (July 23, 2015, at 2 pm ET) for a webinar to discuss some of the biggest challenges he faces in managing the LifeBridge Health SAP BusinessObjects deployment. Attend the webinar to find out how he uses automation and deep system introspection to manage change, meet reporting needs, and reduce the load on IT resources.

View the recorded webinar...

(Note: if you register but are unable to attend, we will send you a link to a recording of the webinar, which you can then enjoy and share at your leisure.)

Webinar Today - Agile BI Platform Management at HP Enterprise Services

When: Oct. 1, 2014, 2 pm EDT - Today
Guest Presenter: Niladri Chowdhury, HP Enterprise Services
Register for the webinar. All registrants will receive a link to this and other recorded webinars.

Agility is now the defining quality for BI platform management, because the agile enterprise has become the norm, and an enterprise can only be as agile as its least agile component -- like the weakest link in a chain.

Niladri Chowdhury joins us today to discuss agile BI platform management at HP Services, an enterprise that specializes in helping other enterprises achieve agility. The "Always on" enterprise integrates mobility, connectivity and interactivity. "Always on" means 24/7, and if your business team is making decisions around the clock, your BI platform has to deliver on the same basis.

BI is central to enterprise decision making, but increasing volume and complexity make it increasingly difficult for BI platform managers and administrators to deliver on BI's promises. Everyone has heard the story of the frog in a pot of water that is slowly brought to a boil. The frog doesn't notice the increasing heat and is boiled alive. Being a BI platform manager can feel like that.

What's to be done? You can stand still and lower service levels; you can add resources; or you can look at strategies for achieving agile BI platform management. Join us today to see how HP Enterprise Services is employing the third option with the help of APOS well managed BI solutions.

Webinar Alert: What's New in Crystal Reports for Enterprise in SAPBusinessObjects BI 4.1

When: Oct. 31, 2013, 10 am / 4 pm EDT - Tomorrow
Sixth in a series of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4 migration-focused webinars

Guest presenter: Henry Kam, Solution Manager, Crystal Reports & BI Platform, SAP

Tomorrow's webinar is the sixth in our series of migration-focused webinars.

SAP Solution Manager Henry Kam joins us to discuss the features and benefits of Crystal Reports in SAP BusinessObjects 4.1. Find out what's new for the standard in pixel-perfect reporting.

The discussion will include topics such as:

• What’s new in SAP Crystal Reports for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0?
• SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise
• SAP Integration
• What’s new in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1?
• Upgrading

Join us.

View the recorded webinar.

View recorded webinars.

APOS Storage Center for Migration

Your content management strategy will be key to your migration success. The APOS Storage Center enterprise BI archive, backup and selective restore solution is a dependable and time-tested solution for SAP BusinessObjects.

Now available: APOS Storage Center for Migration, a product designed specifically to help you migrate your content seamlessly to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1. APOS Storage Center for Migration lets you archive reports and instances, save instances to multiple formats (including neutral formats), and works in conjunction with the DCP to help you leverage your Desktop Intelligence investment in BI 4.1.

Learn more about APOS Storage Center for Migration...

The New APOS Website Is Here

Here's a shout-out to Martijn van Foeken (@mfoeken), who was one of the first to notice and tweet about the redesigned APOS website. Since the site's soft launch at the end of April, we've had lots of feedback from our friends, but none so vocal as Martijn's. Thanks.

The site does not represent a departure for us: it's just catching up. It now shows our focus on the concept of "well managed BI," the organizing principle of our solution set.

What do you think of when you think of APOS Systems Inc.? Maybe you think of report scheduling, or report bursting. Maybe you think of system monitoring and alerts. Maybe you think of backup and selective restore capabilities. Many people use APOS solutions to resolve specific issues they have esperienced in SAP BusinessObjects.

But the point is that APOS solutions grow with your SAP BusinessObjects deployment and your information consumers' needs, helping you become less reactive and more proactive in meeting those needs. APOS solutions resolve the issues you have now, and many of the ones you haven't yet experienced -- but will. They help you in your ongoing quest for well managed BI.

APOS COO Allan Pym on Well Managed BI

Allan Pym, COO of APOS Systems, delivers a presentation on well managed BI at the SAP BusinessObjects New York Metropolitan Area User Group (BONYMAUG) one-day conference, today in New York City.

Well managed BI, aside from being the title of this blog, is the very reason for the existence of APOS. We help BI practitioners move from the curative (or reactive) practice of BI, to the preventive (or active), and eventually to the progressive (or proactive) practice of BI.

Check our solutions page to see how APOS can help your company achieve preventive and progressive BI platform management.

Follow APOS Systems on LinkedIn.