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.

Product Update: APOS Publisher and Xcelsius Bursting

APOS Publisher now includes the ability to burst Xcelsius in the form of a static image (PNG). This new feature lets you export from Xcelsius to a PNG file, and embed the image within PDFs and Excel files, which you can then distribute to multiple destinations, or to print.

This new functionality is in addition to the existing ability to export Xcelsius to SWF files.

Webinar Reminder: Well Managed Migration

When: Oct. 24, 2012, at 10am and 4pm EDT
Migration to SAP BI 4.0 from an earlier version of SAP Businessobjects has been a popular topic at the business intelligence events we've attended this year. If you missed our "Well Managed Migration" presentation at this year's ASUG BusinessObjects User Conference in Orlando, then here's your chance to catch up.
This webinar will help you establish some of the administrative and platform management best practices you will need to plan and manage the migration process. We will show how APOS solutions can help you before, during and after your migration. Our solutions complement and enhance SAP'S administrative and platform management capabilities, so you can migrate from a clean environment to a clean environment.
APOS has almost 20 years experience improving BI administration, performance and ROI. We know from that experience that our solutions can help you before, during and after the migration process, saving you both money and headaches.
Agenda:

• Before Migration – Clean up and back up before you move
• During Migration – Test, evaluate and tweak
• After Migration – Maintain your well managed BI

You should plan on attending this webinar if you are considering migrating or are currently planning to migrate your system to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0.

Webinar reminder: Well Managed BI Today at 2pm ET

There's still time to register for today's Well Managed BI webinar. APOS COO Allan Pym shows you how  SAP BusinessObjects platform management and administration best practices can liberate your resources for more proactive activities and increase BI ROI.

Visual Discovery Infographic

There's a great infographic, sponsored by SAP, produced by the Aberdeen Group, and incorporated in Pierre Leroux's SAP blog entry, Is Visual Discovery for You and Your Organization?. Leroux's claim is that:

Best-in-class companies are already adopting visual discovery solutions over traditional business intelligence (BI), resulting in more agility for their organizations in the face of decreasing business response time.

The infographic tells us that, in visual discovery (or interactive BI): "Business users receive a rich, highly interactive interface, allowing them to manipulate and explore information directly."

The hope is that, in the age of the social Web, with its multi-voiced conversations between companies and customers, BI itself is becoming more conversational, better meeting the needs of information consumers through interactive, visual discovery. SAP's Visual Intelligence (or Visi), working with HANA, and providing drag-and-drop document creation, is a step toward realizing that concept.

ASUG BOUC 2012 - Thanks!

Judging by the talk around the water cooler, this year's ASUG SAP BusinessObjects User Conference was a golden opportunity for APOS representatives to catch up with old friends and make many new ones. Thanks to all of you who made our time at ASUG BOUC 2012 valuable, interesting, and fun.

Our team delivered two presentations at this year's conference: one on geospatial BI; the other on BI 4.0 migration. If you would like more information on either of these topics, visit:

• APOS White Papers - Location Intelligence: Whole-Brain Analytics
• APOS Recorded Webinars - Well Managed BI Migration