Migrating From ProClarity

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1 Migrating From ProClarity History of ProClarity From ProClarity Corporation s brochure: ProClarity Analytics 6 provides organizations with powerful yet simple-to-use analysis tools to cover everything ranging from ad-hoc querying to sophisticated analytic modeling. The solution adapts to unique business and technical requirements while expanding the Microsoft business intelligence (BI) platform with a simple data access solution for SQL Server Analysis Services 2000 and The product and company were very successful and led to the announcement of the acquisition of ProClarity by Microsoft in April This marked a distinct statement of Microsoft s intent to become a major player in the Business Intelligence front end tools market, matching their already significant dominance in the multi-dimensional database market with SQLServer Analysis Services. Unfortunately, while some of ProClarity s capability was preserved, it was migrated to a range of Microsoft tools and spread out across Excel, SharePoint, and PerformancePoint Server (now PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint), and the product itself was deprecated and further development ceased. While users were offered an upgrade path in terms of licensing to PerformancePoint Server, there was no way to migrate existing ProClarity Implementations, requiring a complete rewrite and reimplementation. Additionally, the free flowing, intuitive data browsing and analysis offered by ProClarity and very popular with users, was not replicated and to this day remains a gap in Microsoft s BI product capabilities. Current ProClarity Status Unfortunately, while some of ProClarity s capability was preserved, it was migrated to a range of Microsoft tools and spread out across Excel, SharePoint, and PerformancePoint Server Active support for ProClarity 6.3 SP3, the last incarnation of the product, ceased in July This means that while the core product is now on Passive Support, which means that bugs internal to the product will be fixed, any changes made to the hosting environment (i.e. Windows Server) that might render ProClarity unusable or incompatible, will not be addressed.

2 This places at risk a large number of still extant ProClarity installations where users are still enjoying the functionality and features of ProClarity and where is capabilities are still being used in understanding the performance of businesses running it. With the last update of ProClarity 6.3 (SP3) released in October 2009, it is already somewhat of an art to install and operate ProClarity in today s 64 bit server and workstation operating systems. Indeed, there is no native 64 bit version of ProClarity available. Similarly there is a growing incompatibility with today s browsers for those using the Web Standard or Web Professional versions. Having said all this, there is still a strong and loyal user base of ProClarity. Organisations trying to replace it with other tools face a strong resistance from ProClarity users, who find the replacement tools more difficult to use and often with significantly reduced functionality. The ideal solution would be to find a product that provided the same level (or better) of functionality, with a similar approach to data analysis to preserve user knowledge and training and that would allow the migration of ProClarity reports, views and analyses without any significant investment of time and expertise. BI Office Overview BI Office has been designed and optimized with a number of key objectives in mind: Inspired by ProClarity Build upon the capabilities, approach and usability of ProClarity, whilst updating its User Interface and Architecture to the 21 st Century. High performing, scalable Thin Client OLAP viewer Learn the lessons of the past ten years to address the larger scale of users and data. Intuitive yet sophisticated analytics Easy migration from ProClarity, yet a shallow learning curve for new users to take them from simple reports and views to sophisticated analytics. Seamless dashboard integration Provide a simple but powerful paradigm for users to create their own dashboards, bringing together views and charts that are central to their performance monitoring. Integrated Enterprise Reporting An easy way for users to create parameter driven, dynamic text, high fidelity electronic documents (PDF, word, XPS) that may be scheduled and distributed automatically to large user populations. Enterprise focused solution Make it easy to install and deploy across large organisations, with features that allow easy migration from Development to User Acceptance Testing to Production, with full support for existing data and network security. BI Office makes it easy to move both applications and users from the ProClarity environment to that of BI Office. This comes with native 64 bit support, a distributed server architecture that allows redundancy and scale out across multiple load balanced servers plus significant new analytic capability over and above that offered by ProClarity. Simple Steps to Preserve Your ProClarity Investment Migrating from ProClarity to BI Office could not be simpler. BI Office will render all ProClarity layout choices with only two exceptions, the Decomposition Tree, because Microsoft owns the patent on this and Pyramid

3 Analytics cannot legally replicate it and Perspective Views, because BI Office significantly extends the capability of these and simply requires a small change to the presentation chart (select Scatter Plot). In both cases Pyramid will execute the defined data query and present the data for the user to decide how to best display it. BI Office will preserve all other ProClarity settings, chart and grid layouts, row and column dimension and member selections, slicers, filters and sorts. It will even import calculated members and custom sets, replicating them inside of BI Office. From ProClarity Analytics Server (PAS) Figure 1. PAS settings in the BI Office Administration Console. This is all that is required to enable PAS content to BI Office Users If you are using ProClarity Analytics Server (PAS), then all that is required is to provide the Pyramid Server with access to the PAS content store. Pyramid users (defined in the same way as ProClarity by integrating with Active Directory) can access their ProClarity content directly, without any migration effort whatsoever. Figure 1 shows the BI Office Administration console settings to allow BI Office to read the PAS content store. This is all that is required. ProClarity content is shown under the Legacy folder, with all PAS folder security preserved. BI Office will read the book and report definitions from the PAS content Store and render them faithfully in BI Office. If users then save their books in Pyramid, they will be written to the Pyramid Content store and conversion is done. Figure 2 shows the ProClarity Content under the Legacy folder. Figure 2.. Accessing ProClarity Books and Reports through the BI Office "Legacy Content" Folder. All user security on ProClarity Folders and Books is preserved.

4 Figure 3. View from ProClarity (Web Professional) and from BI Office of the exact same PAS book. Note that BI Office allows multiple views to be open simultaneously and the use of the Accounting Grid formatting in BI Office.

5 From ProClarity Desktop Professional If PAS is not installed and the ProClarity Desktop Professional is being used with users saving their ProClarity Briefing Books (BBKs) locally or to a file server, then BI Office provides a BBK import capability as part of its Backstage functionality. There are two steps involved in this case: 1. The user opens their briefing book and saves it in XML format. 2. The user then imports the briefing book into their personal BI Office folder Figure 4. Importing local ProClarity Briefing Books. Local BBKs end up in the user s personal BI Office folder, allowing users to migrate their own content without involvement of IT

6 Continuity in the User Experience One of the major benefits of the Pyramid Analytics approach is that there is no significant resistance to the upgrade / migration from your ProClarity users. The look and feel of BI Office, whilst updated to reflect the Microsoft Office 2010 UI, remains essentially the same as ProClarity and users will feel instantly at home. This preserves investment in training and user knowledge and creates virtually zero impact on productivity and effectiveness. Figure 5. Using imported ProClarity content in biowriter to produce high quality PDF reports for distribution. This has been amply demonstrated in end user installations. A recent upgrade for a City of London based insurance firm saw an elapsed time of forty five minutes from the arrival of the Pyramid Analytics technician to install BI Office, to their users working in BI Office with their existing PAS content. Summary ProClarity offered probably the best front end user tools for Analysis Services during its lifetime. This was reflected in the number of their customers (over 2,000 companies around the world) and the loyalty of its user base. With the acquisition and subsequent deprecation of the product by Microsoft and the lack of provision of a replacement or easy migration path, these loyal users have been left with no way forward. BI Office has picked up the ProClarity mantle, providing a continuity of user experience coupled with the architecture and robustness required for large scale, enterprise deployments.

7 PYRAMID ANALYTICS the.freedom.to.question.answer.act BI Office integrated analytics, dashboards and reporting PyramidAnalytics.com bioxl, biopoint, biowriter, biominer and BI Office are registered trademarks of Pyramid Analytics. ProClarity and PowerPoint are registered trademarks of Microsoft.