SAP BI 4.1 Migration & Platform Management - Tools & Techniques
Equipping Your BI "Pit Crew" for Success
"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."
Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science, 1966.
Nothing exemplifies teamwork better than the Auto Racing Pit Crew, which is why we chose the BI Pit Crew as our theme this year at the ASUG SAP BusinessObjects User Conference and the SAP TechEd Las Vegas Conference.
Your BI Pit Crew — the team of skilled technologists and team leaders who maintain and manage your BI platform — plays a crucial role in an increasingly information-driven economy. That's why you have to ask youself whether your BI Pit Crew is ready for what's ahead. Are they ready for the migration to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1? Are they ready to meet the challenges of managing and maintaining your new BI 4 deployment? Are they ready for greater mobile use, more self-service options, and greater adoption throughout the enterprise?
The success of your BI Pit Crew will depend largely on how they are equipped — what skills and tools they will use to meet the coming challenges.
The Unsung Heroes of SAP BI 4.1 Platform Management
In auto racing, the unsung heroes in the Pit Crew maintain and manage the race car in real time. They respond quickly and efficiently to all challenges — both expected and unexpected. They anticipate the needs of car and driver prior to each pit stop. They are a team of skilled individuals possessing the specialized tools each needs to accomplish his or her assigned tasks.
To understand just how important teamwork is within the Pit Crew, have a look at this Sport Science video analyzing a Pit Crew in action:
The Auto Racing Pit Crew works continuously to refine the skills, tools, and teamwork of its members, because their individual success is critical to the success of the team, and the team's success is critical to the success of the venture as a whole. The Auto Racing Pit Crew is lean by definition. It has precisely the right number of members to accomplish a set of tasks in the shortest possible period of time. It practices continuously. It is self-interrogating, self-correcting. It is always attempting to improve its performance.
The Well Equipped, Well Managed BI Pit Crew
The Pit Crew's efficiency comes from a balance of resources, skills and tools. Imagine working on the race car with a limited toolkit. Imagine there are more tasks that have to happen simultaneously than there are resources to perform them.
In a well managed BI environment, the skilled technologists and team leaders who maintain and manage your BI platform resemble a Pit Crew in the way they strive continuously for greater efficiency, higher information quality, and better service. The BI Pit Crew often does not have the luxury of practice, and its members are more likely to have to multi-task.
The resources you have available may be limited by the availability of skilled personnel and other factors, but there is no reason the resources you have shouldn't be well equipped to meet the challenges of migration, SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1, and the increased demands of a hungry information consumer community.
APOS Well Managed BI Solutions, Well Managed Migration Tools
Well managed migration starts with well managed BI, and a well managed migration ends with ongoing good management of the BI platform. The first priorities in planning your migration should be to gain a deep understanding of your current system, and to rationalize the structure, security, and content of that system before migrating to the new system.
APOS Well Managed BI solutions and Migration Accelerator products give your BI Pit Crew the specialized tools they need to automate and simplify the many labor-intensive, time-intensive, and potentially error prone tasks they face daily.
BI Platform Management
Automate your SAP BusinessObjects deployment for speed and efficiency, before migration to achieve an efficient migration, and after to reap the full benefits of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1:
- APOS Administrator
Automated administration and system management
- APOS Insight
System metrics, impact analysis, and performance analytics
- APOS IDAC - (Intelligent Data Access Controller)
Monitor, manage and audit BI data connectivity
- APOS Storage Center
Archive, backup, and selective restore of system content
- APOS Publisher
Advanced bursting, consolidation, assured delivery, complex statement processing
Migration Accelerators
Simplify, streamline, and accelerate your SAP Business Objects migration process: