White Paper: SAP BusinessObjects Data Access, Audit, and Accountability with the APOS Intelligent Data Access Controller (IDAC)

One of the most commonly used adjectives for the BI platform manager and BI administrator occupations is "challenging," and understandably so. If BI is your responsibility, over time you will likely face more data, more data sources, more information consumers, and less time to deliver an increasingly complex array of information products.

Even in the best-designed and most highly optimized deployment, these factors will combine to create anomalies in your day to operations. How do you get a handle on query performance issues? How do you track access to sensitive data within increased query activity? These are not merely questions of efficiency. They are questions of risk management and regulatory compliance.

The APOS Intelligent Data Access Controller (IDAC) is a data source agnostic solution for SAP BusinessObjects that can vastly improve the ability of BI platform managers, administrators and technicians to exert control over data and data access across multiple applications, operating systems, and data sources and types. This solution helps you manage and audit data access and activity across technologies, while improving system performance, information security, data privacy, and regulatory accountability.

This white paper provides an in-depth discussion of query performance and sensitive data auditing issues, and how you can use APOS IDAC to achieve greater efficiency and manage risk.

Download the white paper:

Data Access, Audit, and Accountability with the APOS Intelligent Data Access Controller (IDAC)

Webinar: SAP BusinessObjects Data Connectivity, Sensitive Data Auditing

What:The APOS Intelligent Data Access Controller (IDAC) Webinar
When: Wednesday, February 20, 2013, at 10 am and 4 pm ET

It's hard to manage what you can't see. Full BI data connection visibility and active BI query control is typically well beyond the reach of most SAP BusinessObjects administrators and platform managers - those who need it most!
Yet you face growing complexity in your SAP BusinessObjects data access, sensitive data audit, and data accountability requirements. In addition to internal query performance challenges, there are audit and monitoring requirements mandated by regulatory compliance. There is no question that these issues represent substantial risk to your organization's success and security.
In this webinar, we will discuss data connectivity issues that present a risk to every data-driven organization, including:

• Data Visibility and Control - Monitoring and Managing Data Connectivity
• Sensitive Data Auditing - Data Access Monitoring and Regulatory Compliance

The webinar will also introduce you to the APOS Intelligent Data Access Controller (IDAC), a data access, audit, and accountability solution specifically designed to help SAP BusinessObjects administrators and technicians monitor and manage BI data connections and queries.

View a 3-minute preview of the webinar.

SAP BusinessObjects Migration SWOT Analysis

SAP BusinessObjects migration planning can benefit from SWOT analysis — the more such investigation and planning that goes on upstream, the fewer surprises you'll encounter downstream in your migration project management. But SWOT analysis is even more critical in migration pre-planning efforts — the stage at which you are gathering internal approvals and executive sponsorships.

The business case for SAP BusinessObjects migration is a strong one, but it needs to be examined in light of the particular environment, circumstances, and business needs within your enterprise. Without the business case, there is no project.

As a platform manager seeking buy-in, you need to translate generic benefits into line-of-business-specific selling points to make the case for migration. One way to nail down those selling points while committing to due diligence is to perform formal SWOT analysis. 

APOS Insight Lite - BusinessObjects System Metrics

Are you an SAP BusinessObjects platform manager or administrator being asked to do more with less? Do you need a clear inventory of the objects, schedules and instances in your deployment? Do you want to know which objects in your deployment are most frequently used? Most rarely used? Would the ability to analyze and compare report processing windows help you optimize your system?

APOS Insight Lite can help you deal with these questions and more.

APOS Insight Lite is a subset of the services found in the APOS Insight Advanced Solution, a full-featured system metrics, performance analytics, and system planning solution for SAP Business Objects.

Find out more about APOS Insight Lite BusinessObjects system metrics.

An SAP BusinessObjects Backup/Restore Alternative

Jonathan Haun (@jdh2n) of Decision First Technologies has published a great piece on backing up and restoring SAP BusinessObjects on his All Things BOBJ BI blog.

The essence of his post is that SAP BusinessObjects administrators don't generally give too much thought to backing up their deployment. Usually, they simply give a list of requirements to someone in IT and assume the job has been done to those specifications.

However, restoring an SAP BusinessObjects deployment may not be so straightforward, nor particularly timely. Should some object be accidentally deleted or become corrupted, your options are limited to:

• Full restore - replacing the entire deployment with the last known good backup.
• Temporary restore - restoring to a new location and using an import wizard to restore missing or corrupted objects to the production deployment.
• BIAR file restore - use Business Intelligence Archive files (BIARs) to archive and restore portions of the CMS db system and input/output FRS.

Jonathan rightly notes that all of these methods have issues, and the BIAR file method, which had become an easy-to-use favorite of administrators using XI 3.1, has become significantly less than friendly in early BI 4.0 deployments. Jonathan floats the Upgrade Management Tool as a limited workaround for BI 4.0 issues.

There is no replacement for performing regular backups of your SAP BusinessObjects deployment, but that's the easy part. When it comes to maintaining easily accessible archives, all of the methods listed by Jonathan are time-consuming and error-prone, and they look at archive, backup and restore as simply operational issues. What if you have regulatory concerns? What if you are migrating and need to archive instances that you are not migrating in an easily accessible and secure way?

APOS Storage Center offers a solution that complements an incremental SAP BusinessObjects backup strategy. It allows you to back up objects securely and selectively restore them in one simple operation. You can also archive instances in formats not dependent on data connections (e.g., PDF) to server as documents of record for compliance purposes.

Download the APOS Storage Center white paper, or watch the APOS Storage Center recorded webinar.

BusinessObjects Migration Challenges & Best Practices

APOS solution consultants have been working with BI 4.0, SAP BusinessObjects XI, and their many precursors for over 15 years. They've been through many migrations and upgrades. In fact, many of our solutions began their lives as migration support applications.

Some of those solution consultants delivered a standing-room-only presentation on BI 4.0 migration challenges at the 2012 ASUG BusinessObjects User Conference in September, and partially reprised their presentation in an October webinar. (Download or view the recorded webinar on SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 migration challenges.)

We've collected some of their planning and preparation best practices for your convenience on our website.

Webinar Recording: Well Managed Migration

In case you missed it last week, you can find the recorded Well Managed Migration webinar on our website.