Webinar Q & A: What Migration Value Do APOS Solutions and ProductsOffer?

Migration remains this year's big story for the SAP BusinessObjects community. Here's one final question from our "The Business Case for Upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4" webinar attendees:

Q: BI 4.0 comes with a migration tool, so what value do APOS solutions and Migration Accelerator productsbring to the table?

Fred Walther, APOS: When you use the BI 4 migration tool, you move the content from your XI 3.1 environment to your BI 4 environment, but you are moving it as is. Converting UNV universes to UNX universes is another task altogether, and APOS Migration Accelerator products can help you convert universes in bulk, and repoint Web Intelligence reports to the new universes. APOS well managed BI solutions also allow you to compare your old system with your new, and to bulk-manage security, objects, schedules and instances.

Okay, that was a bit of a softball, and right in Fred's wheelhouse, to continue the baseball analogy.

What have we learned so far in our migration webinar series?

• From Pierpaolo Vezzosi, we learned about innovations in the semantic layer.
• From Ty Miller, we learned about the many new features in BI 4.1.
• From Saskia Battersby and Deepa Sankar, we learned about the business value of BI 4.x.

We've really only just scratched the surface of the migration topic. Our webinar series continues on Sept. 19, 2013, when SAP's J. C. Raveneau joins us to discuss the finer points of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x migration planning.

Webinar Q & A: Your Biggest Migration Challenge

Great question from one of our "The Business Case for Upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4" webinar attendees:

Q: What is the biggest challenge in migrating from 3.1 to 4.x you've seen?

...and a great answer from our guest presenter, SAP's Saskia Battersby:

Saskia Battersby, SAP: In general, the biggest challenge is understanding the size and complexity of the migration project. BI 4 contains many changes which complicate the migration process, but which are necessary for the future of BI within your organization. It is important to come to terms with the scope of the migration project during the planning stage, to use all of the resources at your disposal, and to work with experienced partners to increase your prospects for an effective and efficient transition to BI 4.

...and also from APOS Systems' Fred Walther:

Fred Walther, APOS: One specific challenge is the migration of large amounts of content. Sometimes migration of a large number of instances is not practical, so it is important to have a strategy and solution in place to archive those instances, and to be able to retrieve them selectively as needed, whether for operational or compliance purposes.

For more help in planning, preparing and achieving an efficient migration, see our migration webinar series.