Migration Webinar Today - Web Intelligence Update

When: Wednesday, October 15, 2014, 10 am / 4 pm EDT
Guest Presenter: Gregory Botticchio, Solution Manager, SAP

Our migration webinar series continues as SAP's Gregory Botticchio joins us to to provide an update on the latest news for Web Intelligence in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1. Gregory will discuss new and incremental features, and provide glimpse into coming capabilities. Join us to learn about:

• Performance improvements
• New customization capabilities
• Enhanced core capabilities

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Learn about other webinars in this series...

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.

APOS Announces Dashboard Auditor Product

APOS Systems Inc. today at the 2014 SAP Analytics & BusinessObjects Conference (SABOUC) announced the release of its new APOS Dashboard Auditor for SAP BusinessObjects.

Using the Dashboard Auditor, you can:

• Audit Xcelsius and Design Studio dashboards, as well as Xcelsius components streamed into Design Studio using APOS Dashboard Migrator.
• Implement usage auditing - know who is using your dashboards, and where and when.
• Implement functional auditing - know how your dashboards are being used.
• Verify that your investment in dashboards is paying off - that the dashboards are being used by your target audiences, and as you intended.
• Analyze your current Dashboards environment in preparation for migration to Design Studio.

Dashboards are an increasingly important means of delivering business intelligence. Companies are investing substantial sums in dashboard development and want to know how effective they are in delivering that information, and how dashboards can be improved to meet user requirements and expectations.
Visit the APOS team at SABOUC, Booth #105, to learn firsthand how the APOS Dashboard Auditor can help you optimize the dashboard experience of your information consumers.

Read the press release.

See You at SABOC 2014, Booth #105

Will you be there in Dallas / Fort Worth? The APOS team will be at booth #105, ready and willing to talk to you about how we can help you become more agile in your SAP BusinessObjects BI platform management and administration.

We will also be hosting an education session on Agile BI Platform Management at HP Enterprise Services, featuring HP's Niladri Chowdhury. Niladri will be sharing his migration and platform management experiences.

The HP "Always On" initiative positions HP Enterprise Services as an agile enterprise enabling agility in other enterprises. Naturally, they need their SAP BusinessObjects BI 4 platform management to be agile as well. With customers such as the US Navy, the UK Ministry of Defense and NASA, HP ES must also be the agile enterprise which it sells. Using HP products such as HP Vertica and HP Autonomy with SAP BusinessObjects, their IT department is a model for the integration of complex information systems to produce real-time BI and effective data visualization.

If you are experiencing challenges with volume and complexity in your BI deployment, Niladri's experiences will be familiar to you. Find out how he brings agility to the HP Enterprise Services SAP BusinessObjects deployment.

Webinar Alert: Healthcare & BI Platform Management

When: Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014 - 10 am, 4 pm EDT

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BI in the Healthcare sector is growing rapidly in response to US healthcare reform, and healthcare organizations are looking for proactive ways to manage and administer the BI platform in the face of increasing volume, complexity and compliance considerations.

Join us for a discussion of the major challenges facing SAP BusinessObjects BI platform managers and administrators in the healthcare industry. This webinar will examine ways to increase your BI platform management agility to help you:

• Master complexity in data sources and information consumer requirements
• Manage compliance through greater system visibility and high-volume administration
• Maintain credibility through reliable, secure, accurate and timely delivery of information

Please join us as we explore techniques and best practices for SAP BusinessObjects platform management in healthcare.

Register for the webinar

Security Blogging - A Stitch in Time…

For information on using APOS solutions to help you bolster and manage security, visit our more recent series of security posts.

By Rick Epstein

Have you ever heard someone rationalize an important decision with a folksy saying? It may make one seem wise at the time, but you should be aware that, for every such "wise" saying, there is generally an equally wise and opposite saying. For example, "look before you leap," but "he who hesitates is lost."

If your rationale for not reconsidering your SAP BusinessObjects security model is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," then my reply to you is that "A stitch in time saves nine." You won't know whether it's broken until you look.

There are, of course, other sorts of objections to taking action that I hear over and over again from normally risk-averse people who don't want to address necessary changes to their SAP BusinessObjects security model.

Here are the top five:

We don't have any data that needs to be secured.

Great. Just publish it all on the Internet. No? Every company has private data that they don't want to share with competitors and/or the public. The only difference is the degree to which a breach will hurt. What is your pain threshold?

We don't have time right now.

What will it take to get your attention? Delaying the discussion of your SAP BusinessObjects security model will almost inevitably lead to an unanticipated security breach. Implementing a well designed security model is an investment. Prioritize and make the time.

We don't have money in the budget.

Budgets are expressions of priorities. If you don't have money in the budget, then you need to re-examine your priorities. The potential cost to your company -- in terms of both money and reputation -- in the event private information is viewed by an unauthorized person or persons far exceeds what it would cost you to analyze and reengineer your SAP BusinessObjects security model.

Why should we change? Our security model works fine.

If it seems as though the pain of change is too much to bear, ask yourself how you will feel about the pain of regret. It is quite likely that there are unknown security holes in your security model. Designing and implementing a security model using a true top-down methodology is the only way to ensure that there are no such holes.

We don't have resources who know enough…
…about SAP BusinessObjects security to instantiate a true top-down security model. Then I guess today is your lucky day. Please reach out to me at repstein@resolvitinc.com. I would be glad to provide some tips and tricks and answer some questions in a 1-hour free consultation.

SAP BusinessObjects Security - Remediation, or How to Find & Repair Gaping Holes in Your Current Security Model

For information on using APOS solutions to help you bolster and manage security, visit our more recent series of security posts.

By Rick Epstein

Ideally, you will want to plan your security architecture and design a bulletproof security model. However, sometimes assessment will uncover gaping holes in your current architecture, and you will want to close those holes as quickly as possible to reduce risk to your organization.

Here are the broad strokes for assessment and remediation. Keep in mind the best practices discussed in the previous post as you proceed through each of these steps:

1. Inventory groups and group members (users)
2. Look at each granular inherited & explicit permission for each principal for each content folder, universe folder, category folder, connection (connection folders in BI 4.x)
3. Are there any permissions set specifically on content within these folders?
4. Create groups for each application and apply the No Access to the Everyone group for each group on its respective application
5. Create groups for every content folder, universe folder, category folder, connection (connection folders in BI 4.x)
6. Apply the same security to each group on each folder
7. Create generic groups for specific grants or denials of rights
8. From your inventory of groups and users and permissions set for each, assign users to these new groups
9. Remove users from the old groups
10. Store the old groups in another group called something like "zzzToBeDeleted"

As I said, these are the broad strokes. They are a good start, but there remain traps for the unwary, and great potential for unintended consequences. If it reminds you of old mariners' charts with captions such as "There be dragons here," that may be a good thing.

Next in the security blogging series: Why companies don't update their security model.