Migrating to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x with APOS Well Managed BI Solutions. Tom Woodhead, APOS Systems

Transcription

1 Migrating to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x with APOS Well Managed BI Solutions Tom Woodhead, APOS Systems

2 Copyright 2017, APOS Systems 100 Conestoga College Blvd., Suite 1101 Kitchener ON N2P 2N6, Canada

3 Table of Contents Introduction... 1 Managing Migration Risk... 1 Know Your System... 2 Know Your Content... 2 Migrating with APOS Well Managed BI Solutions... 3 APOS Insight Start with System Visibility... 4 APOS Storage Center Secure Your Documents of Record... 4 APOS Administrator Automate Object, Schedule & Instance Management... 5 APOS Migrator for Web Intelligence Automate Universe Conversion & Report Repointing.. 6 APOS Validation Manager Automate Report Testing... 6 APOS Well Managed BI Solutions Ongoing ROI... 6 System Visibility... 7 Content Control, Distribution and Enhancement... 7 Conclusion... 8 Appendix A: APOS Insight and SAP BI 4.x Monitoring... 9 Much More than Monitoring System Planning, Audit Migration About APOS Systems i

4 Introduction The key to a well managed migration is starting from a well managed BI deployment. You will succeed in your migration to the degree that you are prepared, and you will be prepared to the degree that your source and target SAP BusinessObjects deployments are well managed. To achieve a well managed BI deployment you need to perform due diligence with regard to the "5 pillars" of well managed BI: Strategy / Optimization Security Performance Operational Maintenance Compliance / Governance A well managed BI deployment minimizes curative (or reactive) activities, liberating your resources to pursue preventive and progressive (or proactive) objectives that improve decisionmaking workflows, increase return on investment, and reduce total cost of ownership. APOS well managed BI solutions automate, simplify, enhance and extend many SAP BusinessObjects administrative and operational tasks, helping you and your resources become more progressive BI practitioners. The time to achieve well managed BI is before you migrate, not after, and APOS has the solutions to help you plan, design, implement, cut over and go live effectively: APOS Insight benchmark and optimize performance, plan the target environment, compare security environments. APOS Storage Center safeguard object, instance integrity for audit and compliance; save to neutral formats; purge Web Intelligence reports intelligently; manage disc space. APOS Administrator clean up content; manage security and users; apply bulk operations on objects, instances, recurring schedules to simplify complex deployments. APOS Migrator for Web Intelligence convert UNV universes to UNX, and repoint Web Intelligence reports in bulk using a controlled, project based interface APOS Validation Manager compare reports and instances between deployments; automate testing for Web Intelligence, Analysis for Office, Crystal Reports, and Crystal Reports for Enterprise Managing Migration Risk The more variables you account for during planning and design, the fewer deviations there will be from the project plan during and after implementation (and the more likely the project will be to come in on time and on budget). You mitigate risk by knowing your system, your requirements, and your capabilities prior to migration. 1

5 Know Your System How well do you know your current system? Where are the bottlenecks? How can you ensure these bottlenecks won't get worse with migration? Will migration merely amplify existing issues? Remember the famous acronym that is almost as old as commercial computing itself: GIGO garbage in, garbage out. Clearly, the best time to achieve well managed BI is before you migrate. Figure 1 shows the kinds of information you need to consider in your risk calculations. Figure 1: Five Pillars of Well Managed BI Know Your Content The one element of your BI system that complicates migration more than any other, and thus creates additional risk, is your content. SAP recommends that you migrate only the content you need to reduce time requirements and control risk. How much of your current content you decide to migrate may depend on many factors, such as whether you are performing a full / "one shot" upgrade or a staged / incremental / departmental upgrade, or whether your audit / compliance requirements are extreme. System performance may be affected by a complete migration of your content. Take the time to review your content needs from the perspective of information consumer needs, and from 2

6 the perspective of governance and regulatory compliance. Will you be able to satisfy information consumer requests for unmigrated information after the new system is live? Will all of your documents of record be easily retrievable in the event of an audit? Your system storage strategy needs to answer these and other similar questions. Fortunately, APOS well managed BI solutions can help you formulate a robust system storage strategy that answers these questions, and many others, and help you in your quest for a well managed BI migration. The key is to understand fully the obstacles and opportunities before you. Migrating with APOS Well Managed BI Solutions APOS well managed BI solutions enjoy a widespread reputation among SAP BusinessObjects platform managers, administrators and technologists as tools for very specific BI tasks. They simplify, automate and complement many SAP BusinessObjects management and administrative responsibilities. More and more, our customers are starting to see our solution set as the means to realize maximum ROI from their SAP BusinessObjects platform. Figure 2: SAP Upgrade Timeline Source: Best Practices and Methodologies for Upgrading SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 The value of APOS solutions becomes even more apparent when these customers take on the challenge of migrating their SAP BusinessObjects deployment to a newer version or service pack. 3

7 APOS Insight - Start with System Visibility Figure 2 shows SAP's recommended upgrade path and some of the major considerations to take into account. The first consideration they list is Assessment, in which you determine the magnitude of the project. The more informed you are at the beginning of the project, the less firefighting you will do in the later stages. The better the job you do of assessing the scope and magnitude of the migration at the beginning of the project, the better for your budget, the delivery timeline, and ultimately for the quality of your deployment APOS Insight provides a complete snapshot of what is happening at any given time within your system, meaning that you can analyze system usage and bottlenecks over time as a preliminary step in planning your new implementation. You can: Populate a database with point in time snapshots of system status Extract benchmark information about your system before the migration, then after the migration, and compare them. Run comparison reports/queries of what has changed. See where reports have moved to in the new deployment. Map IDs in one system to IDs in the other. Compare the security structures between the two environments to ensure groups are in place, users are in groups and all are properly permissioned, thus eliminating security holes. Once you have deployed the new version of SAP BusinessObjects, APOS Insight continues to provide high value with enhanced metadata management, audit, and monitoring capabilities. See Appendix A: APOS Insight and SAP BI 4.x Monitoring for more information on how APOS Insight complements the capabilities of SAP BusinessObjects. APOS Storage Center - Secure Your Documents of Record APOS Storage Center makes it easy to back up, archive and selectively restore your documents of record in a secure and timely manner essential to ensuring regulatory compliance and meeting the needs of your information consumers, particularly when you are limiting the amount of content you are migrating. APOS Storage Center is a dedicated SAP BusinessObjects document lifecycle management solution. It is designed to ensure the integrity of your documents, safeguard data privacy, and support regulatory compliance. It should be a key element in your disaster recovery plan before, during and after migration. APOS Storage Center helps you: Mitigate risk by safeguarding objects, document instances, and instance integrity for audit and compliance purposes. 4

8 Migrate document instances from one deployment of SAP BusinessObjects to another; perform partial or complete migration. Extract and export objects and document instances to other formats such as PDF. Implement an intelligent means to purge Web Intelligence reports while retaining retrievable versions. Manage disc space carefully. APOS Administrator - Automate Object, Schedule & Instance Management APOS Administrator automates and simplifies object, instance, and schedule management. During migration, reports are typically relocated. Use APOS Administrator to save, import, batch modify, and export schedules. You can: Adapt the migrated source system to the new environment using bulk operations on a large number of system objects (reports, folders, users, security, settings, etc.). Import schedules from the legacy system, then map and export them to the new system. Analyze an entire report instance environment at once. Apply actions to instances in bulk. Establish control over migrated instances/schedules. Modify recurring schedules. Manage scheduling crises quickly and efficiently. Manage objects in bulk. Perform sophisticated deployment of reports and documents to the system. Promote objects from development/testing to production efficiently and in compliance with data security and privacy requirements. Control security to the various objects. Perform common maintenance of Users and Groups, simplifying the onerous task of setting advanced security rights. APOS Administrator provides administrative capabilities that simplify, complement and enhance SAP BusinessObjects object and document instance management and scheduling features. In the hands of platform managers, BI technicians and other power users, APOS Administrator makes SAP BusinessObjects more responsive to enterprise information needs. APOS Administrator saves valuable administrative time through automation and task streamlining, reducing human error, and providing the agility and flexibility to meet the changing needs of information consumers. Whether you're managing or re engineering business processes, establishing crisis management or disaster recovery procedures, or preparing for migration to a newer version of SAP BusinessObjects, APOS Administrator creates value through operational efficiencies, establishing trust through reliability. 5

9 APOS Migrator for Web Intelligence - Automate Universe Conversion & Report Repointing The UNX universe is an important innovation in BI 4. If you have a large number of existing Web Intelligence objects, then taking advantage of this innovation could require a time consuming and resource intensive process to repoint them to your new UNX universes. The APOS Migrator for SAP Web Intelligence provides a controlled, project based platform for converting UNV to UNX and repointing Web Intelligence reports. It lets you: Scan your system for Web Intelligence reports and select them Optionally convert an existing UNV universe to UNX Repoint Web Intelligence reports in bulk Optionally replace existing reports, rename the new reports, or move the new reports to a different folder Export universe properties Manage data connections APOS Validation Manager - Automate Report Testing Day to day report development and change management, as well as the adoption of new SAP BusinessObjects versions and service packs, require labor and time intensive report testing. Automating this process allows you to maintain your system efficiently and adopt new technology in a timely manner, while managing your resources effectively. APOS Validation Manager provides automated report testing for: SAP Web Intelligence Analysis for Office Crystal Reports Crystal Reports for Enterprise You implement BI to optimize operational and financial efficiency. What do you do to optimize BI efficiency? APOS Well Managed BI Solutions - Ongoing ROI Well managed BI is an ongoing process rather than a state. You can simplify your migration project by applying APOS well managed BI solutions before, during and after migration to get off to a great start, but maintaining a well managed BI deployment will require an ongoing commitment to the system and content objectives you established for your migration. 6

10 System Visibility APOS Insight is simply unsurpassed at providing system visibility: there is no other way to gain this deep system introspection. Use APOS Insight to: Automate the process of recording regularly scheduled snapshots of system status for audit and historical analysis, so that you can perform ongoing system planning and sizing. Establish threshold driven alerts to perform remedial activities and maintain service levels. Monitor document instance success and failure and receive or event log notifications. Monitor CMS data tables and populate reports and dashboards with near real time infoobjects, SystemObjects, and AppObjects data. Audit web application server sessions along with SAP BusinessObjects sessions to capture granular information about transactions such as parameters, URLs, cookies, header information, and SAP BusinessObjects logins and populate reports and dashboards for a near real time view of these sessions. The APOS Intelligent Data Access Controller (IDAC) lets administrators see who is running what, where and when, and lets them monitor and manage queries from your BI system to all data sources. Use APOS IDAC to: Track queries in real time. Intervene manually in queries. Automatically cancel runaway queries. Perform highly detailed audits of BI queries. Content Control, Distribution and Enhancement APOS Storage Center should be part of any ongoing SAP BusinessObjects content lifecycle management plan. Use it to: Back up and archive your report infrastructure in easily retrievable formats. Selectively restore reports for audit and compliance purposes. Optimize system performance by making only those reports necessary for daily information requirements available. Purge instances intelligently after backup to prevent content proliferation in the production environment. APOS Administrator simplifies, automates and enhances SAP BusinessObjects administration, so you can: Manage your entire report instance environment at once. Perform bulk instance, object and user/user group security management 7

11 Manage schedules quickly and easily. APOS Publisher is an essential solution for enterprises with complex SAP BusinessObjects report distribution requirements. It is also a favorite for organizations that need to replace legacy enterprise information delivery applications such as statement generation. Use APOS Publisher to: Generate a large number of individually scheduled reports automatically according to established business rules. Burst large report instances into smaller instances based on business rules, convert to a common format and distribute. Consolidate multiple reports into report packages for easier distribution and consumption. Execute tightly controlled Analysis for Office document production and distribution workflows. Implement post processing to include metadata with reports for smart integration with content management systems and other applications With the integration of APOS Publisher Distribution Server module and its post processing capabilities in the SAP BI 4.2 SP4 BI Launchpad, organizations with a Distribution Server license can exercise even greater administrative and user control over destinations, formats, security and encryption directly from the Launchpad. Conclusion Migration project best practices require you to exercise extreme due diligence in your migration preparation and execution, because the cost of dealing with issues overlooked during planning can increase exponentially as the project progresses. APOS well managed BI solutions give you superior system knowledge, audit and regulatory compliance, instance and object management, and information delivery capabilities, thus providing a significant edge during planning design, implementation, and cutover. After you go live, APOS solutions help you to maintain a well managed BI environment and to pursue opportunities to deliver progressive information services to your enterprise. 8

12 Appendix A: APOS Insight and SAP BI 4.x Monitoring APOS Insight provides enhanced metadata management, including auditing, monitoring and alerts. It uses both statistical and functional server analysis to help SAP BusinessObjects administrators and platform managers optimize the business intelligence environment and infrastructure. APOS Insight's features let you manage your system more proactively and achieve progressive BI objectives. Although the core capabilities of APOS Insight are advanced auditing, metadata management, and system analysis, the solution also includes a platform monitoring module. We are frequently asked how this element of the solution relates to the monitoring available in SAP BO 4.0. The simple answer is that APOS Insight's monitoring capabilities complement and add value to the SAP BusinessObjects monitoring solution. Value provided by APOS Insight monitoring capabilities: 1. Dependability Insight monitors SAP BusinessObjects from outside the system, while SAP's Monitoring service monitors from within the system. When the system begins to malfunction, Insight continues to monitor it and provide alerts. Because SAP's Monitoring resides within the system, it may itself fall victim to system malfunction. 2. System Self Healing Insight monitors SAP BusinessObjects from outside, using statistical and functional analysis, and can launch remedial actions to correct monitored errors. 3. Accessibility Administrators access SAP's Monitoring via a dashboard in the CMC, which of course relies on the availability of the Web server. When you need monitoring functionality the most is when you are most likely not to have it. 4. Versatility Insight's integration with SAP BusinessObjects is seamless and time tested. It executes SAP BusinessObjects probes, as well as any other custom user scripts. 5. SNMP/MIB Support Insight sends detailed, actionable intelligence to , the Windows Event Log, or SNMP traps. Using SNMP and MIB files, administrators can take specific corrective action remotely (e.g. restart a server, clear files). Note: SAP's built in monitoring supports only IBM's Tivoli as an external monitoring system, while APOS Insight's MIB support lets it work with any monitoring system. 6. Depth of Detail SAP's Monitoring shows administrators statistics on system usage, but Insight provides much more detail. For example, Monitoring will tell you how many users are using the system, but Insight will tell you who they are. 7. System Health Monitoring Insight s Process Logger allows you to benchmark system processes; Insight s Process Monitor tells you how system processes are responding relative to those benchmarks, and the relative health of the processes can be written to reports. 8. Web Application Server Auditing Insight s Website Auditor audits web application server sessions and SAP BusinessObjects sessions, capturing parameters used in each transaction, URLs, cookies, header information, posting information, and SAP 9

13 BusinessObjects login details, writing them to a database table, which can be used to populate reports and dashboards. 9. Live Access to CMS Data Tables Insight s BI Metadata Driver provides live access to the SAP BI CMS InfoObjects, SystemObjects, and AppObjects data tables, which can be used to populate dashboards, providing a live view of system health. 10. Information Governance Insight simplifies financial internal control baselining and supports your change management processes to meet governance and compliance requirements. Much More than Monitoring It's important to remember that monitoring is only a small part of what Insight provides. Before SAP BI 4.0 introduced Monitoring functionality, SAP BusinessObjects had only Auditor and Metadata Management as tools. Insight has never competed with these tools. Rather, Insight complements the functionality of these SAP applications, providing enhanced metadata management and auditing capabilities. Insight makes system management and auditing easier and more reliable. System Planning, Audit For example, Insight shows you who is logged in at 30 second intervals, who is joining and who is leaving sessions. By gathering this history, you can have a record of license use, sessions, system usage, peak usage times, low usage times, and abnormalities and you will be able to report accurately on changing system requirements. Insight answers questions about the structure of the SAP BusinessObjects metadata and the structure of the reports themselves for the purpose of impact analysis. Administrators can use Insight to understand the structure of universes and business views, which reports are using business views or universes, what fields are on a report, what parameters. You can look at the simple act of changing a field in a database and understand what impact it will have, right down to the field level on a report which universes are going to be affected, which reports. It allows the platform manager/administrator to do impact analysis before making a change. All of this information is very hard to come by without Insight. Migration Insight has great value in migration scenarios, because it provides a complete snapshot of what is happening in the system. You can extract information about your system before the migration, after the migration, and compare them. You can see where reports have moved to in the new deployment. You can map IDs in one system to IDs in the other. You can compare the security structures between the two environments to ensure groups are in place, users are in groups and all are properly permissioned, thus eliminating security holes. 10

14 About APOS Systems Since its beginning in 1992, APOS Systems has evolved from a custom business application development shop to a global provider of solutions promoting Well Managed Business Intelligence. APOS Well Managed BI solutions simplify administration and management of SAP BusinessObjects, providing automated administration, automated testing, auditing and monitoring, storage and recovery, and content publishing and distribution. APOS data connectivity solutions provide expanded data options for SAP Lumira, SAP Design Studio, and SAP BusinessObjects Cloud. APOS solutions simplify, automate, complement, enhance and extend BI practices, and focus BI processes for greater agility in your organization's decision making capabilities. 11