Migration Planning & Preparation - SAP Community Network (SCN)

Just published in the June 2013 edition of Business Intelligence News on the SAP Community Network: "Best Practices for a Smooth Migration to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0."

I co-authored this post with SAP's Thierry Audas. It's a good place to start with your migration planning and preparation.

For more migration resources, check out:

• BI 4 Upgrade Resources - APOS Migration Accelerator products
• SAP BusinessObjects BI 4 Migration Webinar Series - a series of APOS-sponsored, migration-focused webinars featuring expert guest presenters from SAP
• Migrating to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 with APOS Well Managed BI Solutions (PDF) - a white paper

Upcoming Webinar: The Business Case for Upgrading to SAPBusinessObjects BI 4

When: July 11, 2013, 10am & 4pm EDT
Third in a series of migration-focused webinars hosted by APOS
View other webinars in this series

Guest presenters:
Saskia Battersby, General Manager, Solution Management, Agnostic BI Market Segment, SAP
Deepa Sankar, Director, BI Product Marketing, SAP

View the recorded webinar.

In this webinar series, we've given you many technical reasons for adopting SAP BusinessObjects BI 4. Now SAP's Saskia Battersby and Deepa Sankar bring us a more business-oriented perspective on migration. They join us to discuss the business case for upgrading to BI 4.

We will discuss:

• The value SAP BusinessObjects BI 4 brings to your organization
• How it aligns with strategic business intelligence objectives
• How you can increase Return on Investment (ROI)
• How you can lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Please join us for this informative webinar.

View the recorded webinar.

Webinar Alert: What's New in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1

When: June 13, 2013, 10am & 4pm EDT
Second in a series of migration-focused webinars hosted by APOS
Guest presenter: Ty Miller, Vice President, BI Solution Management, SAP

As Vice President, BI Solution Management at SAP, Ty Miller is responsible for SAP BusinessObjects strategic product management and market success. Ty joins us to discuss what's new in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1.

This is a timely event, as SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1 entered its ramp-up phase on May 10, 2013, offering a range of new capabilities and opening up many new possibilities. This webinar will provide an overview of the important new technology advancements of BI 4.1, and describes how it is:

• One Suite for All Insight with improved interoperability between clients, unified mobile BI suite and new and improved SDKs
• One Place for All Information with connectivity to many new Big Data and exotic data sources
• One Standard for Enterprise BI with many new stability, migration, deployment, multi-tenant and localization capabilities

View the recorded webinar.

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x Migration & the Semantic Layer

Thanks to SAP's Pierpaolo Vezzosi for delivering an informative presentation on the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x Semantic Layer and migration considerations.

The May 30 webinar was the first in a series of migration-focused presentations APOS will be hosting over the coming months, each featuring one or more expert guest presenters.

For more information:

• View the recorded webinar.
• Register for upcoming webinars in the migration series.
• Read about APOS Migration Accelerator products.

Webinar: The Semantic Layer & SAP BusinessObjects BI 4 Migration

Migration is shaping up to be the topic of the year for the SAP BusinessObjects community. In recognition of this fact, APOS is scheduling a series of webinars on migration. The first of these webinars features guest presenter Pierpaolo Vezzosi.

When: May 30, 2013, 10 am / 4 pm EDT
First in a series of SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 migration-focused webinars
Guest presenter: Pierpaolo Vezzosi — SAP — Director, Solution Management

View the recorded webinar.

Pierpaolo Vezzosiis Director, Solution Management, at SAP, and has been product manager for the semantic layer since 2007. He will join us for this webinar to discuss the design principles, features and benefits of the new SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 semantic layer, and the UNX universe format in particular.
Innovations in the semantic layer of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 create immense value, and migrating to BI 4.0 creates an opportunity to embrace the future of business intelligence within your organization.

The benefits are real, but the prospect of migrating may seem daunting to many. This webinar lays out migration lessons learned, and discusses migration challenges. The webinar also introduces new migration products from APOS that apply these lessons and simplify and automate many of the more labor-intensive, time-intensive, and potentially error prone tasks in your migration project.

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Migration Best Practices

I recently co-authored a piece for the SAP Analytics blog with SAP's Thierry Audas (@taudas) on SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 migration best practices. The article proposes some migration planning and preparation checklist considerations. This piece is just another chapter in the longstanding collaboration between APOS and SAP. If you want to see a concrete example of this collaboration, read Saskia Battersby's SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Migration, Collaboration, and Innovation piece over at the SAP Community Network (SCN).

The close collaboration between APOS and SAP continues with our recent focus on migration acceleration products. This set of tools is designed to help you realize ROI faster by preparing for, and automating and simplifying the most labor-intensive, time-intensive, and potentially error-prone migration tasks. These products help you:

• Convert UNV universes to UNX universes in bulk
• Repoint Web Intelligence reports to UNX universes in bulk
• Schedule Web Intelligence reports, set/reconstruct prompts from .NET applications
• Migrate Crystal Reports 2011 to Crystal Reports for BI Enterprise in bulk
• Use Desktop Intelligence reports with BI 4.1
• Analyze Desktop Intelligence reports for Web Intelligence and UNX compatibility
• Migrate Desk Intelligence reports to Web Intelligence reports

If you're like the majority of SAP BusinessObjects platform managers or users we've been speaking with, then this is the year you are migrating to BI 4.0 or 4.1. Most say the benefits are too great to wait. They see BI 4.x as the future of BI in their organizations.

More APOS/SAP collaboration: don't miss our upcoming webinar on The Semantic Layer & BI4.x Migration (View the recorded webinar), with guest presenter Pierpaolo Vezzosi, Director, Solution Management at SAP. Pierpaolo has been working with the semantic layer for 12 years and will discuss its role and benefits in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0.

This webinar will be the first in a series of migration-focused events featuring guest presenters with deep and specific insights into the BI 4.x platform and migration considerations

APOS & SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 - Migration, Collaboration, Innovation

We have a new post up on the SAP Community Network:

APOS Systems recently released a product that converts UNV universes to UNX universes in bulk. The story of its development involves close collaboration between APOS and SAP's product management team, as well as innovation for the benefit of the entire SAP BusinessObjects™ community.

Read the entire post.

The post documents a small part of the long-time and ongoing collaboration between APOS and SAP. In this case, it's about migration to BI 4.0, and what APOS is doing, in collaboration with SAP, to smooth the migration path.

The APOS Converter for BI 4.0 universes allows you to scan your system for existing UNV universes, select them, and convert them in bulk to UNX universes. It's just one of the many BI 4.0 upgrade resources that APOS offers to help you migrate smoothly and manage your resources efficiently.