Planning is probably the most important milestone as our experience shows a clear and direct link between proper planning and success.
Things to consider
In your planning process you will want to consider at least the following items and make sure you include them in the process.
Skills and Enablement | While the BI 4 platform is compatible with most existing BI content and its design similar to XI 3.1, there are some fundamental differences both from users and administration standpoint that need to be accounted for.
IT & Administrators : differences in the platform design such as the grouping of processes in the APS, the mobile server or the built-in SAP integration mean that existing installation, deployment and tuning processes need to be revised. Training, hands-on discovery and update of existing procedures need to be accounted for.
BI Developers : As a starting point, BI developers should review existing BI clients for changes in their usual workflows. While most changes are intuitive and improvements over previous releases, an adaptation period needs to be expected. Going further BI developers need to evaluate the new BI clients and capabilities in order to realize the full value of the new platform.
End Users: The user experience was revamped across the entire suite with the objective to be more modern, engaging and improve productivity on most frequent workflows. As intuitive as they are, changes will require an adjustment period. It is recommended to evaluate directly with business users where help may be needed and include in the rollout plan. |
Scope and Methodology | BI 4 offers various technical options to achieve the upgrade. From a full system copy to incremental, your strategy will depend on your specific technical and business requirements. There is not a one-size-fit-all recommendation.
Your upgrade assessment needs to account for the size of your existing deployment, the time zones it serves, how many users and BI applications run on it, how much down time the business can cope with, etc...
As a rule of thumb, smaller environments serving a couple hundreds users are more likely to be candidates for a one shot full system upgrade. However some of our smaller customers still preferred to use a staged upgrade due to the business-critical nature of BI.
As far as scope is concerned: you do not want to do both a platform upgrade (sometimes called technical upgrade) and modify your existing BI applications (for example to leverage new features) in the same project. Those should be organized as different projects in order to remain manageable in scope and risk. |
Architecture and Sizing | Because of changes in the BI platform, specially the adoption of 64 bit and the support of new capabilities such as monitoring or Analysis, you have to plan for a revised sizing and architecture blueprint.
Planning and executing this task early in the upgrade process will allow for proper provisioning of the new infrastructure to support BI 4
Expect that some degree of server tuning will be needed even on your sandbox or development environments in order to process some of your larger existing reports. |
Test and Validation | Your upgrade plan should include multiple stages of testing. Additional investment on testing reduces the risks on your project. Your plan should at least include:
The user acceptance should cover all business-critical analytics (typically executive dashboards and operational reports) as well as a good sample of BI applications going across the different report structures typically used. |
Impacted IT processes
In order to put some perspectives on the upgrade to BI4, below is a summary list of IT processes that may be impacted. The actual impact will depend on how much they rely on the BI Platform infratsucture in your own business.
| ADMINISTRATION | OPERATIONS | APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT |
Architecture design Sizing Upgrade process LCM process Portal & customization | Setup & Configuration Tuning Backup & Restore procedures Traces & Diagnosis Audit & Monitoring Updates and patching process | Choice of a client tool Data Federation Access to SAP BW OpenDocument & drill-through Portal and workspaces SDK-based applications |
Secure your success
Given the scale of changes and innovations involved in the upgrade, engaging with SAP and/or a Partner is essential to success. The more connected and informed, the better. Always. There are 3 main parties you should be engaging in perspective of an upgrade, in the very early stages, before you scope and plan:
| Your account team (account manager, global account director, client partner...) | They are your first liaison to SAP and will support your success even if you have no immediate plan to license more software. Your account team can help you discover what's new in BI4 and business opportunities that could not be addressed before. They can also help you with questions such as: How will you run multiple systems without being out of compliance? Is there an opportunity to convert existing licenses into a model that best supports your growth? What are the implications of scaling up your hardware? etc... |
| SAP Active Global Support | At SAP, Support is not just about tickets and hotline, it's about business continuity. Most customers on older SAP BusinessObjects releases are not aware of the full extent of services already included in their support contract. Nor do they know about the latest innovations in system monitoring and root cause analysis.
Setup Support Services: reach out to the Customer Interaction Center so they can explain what services are available and how to best interact with Support. You may also want to look at the Global Support Customer Interaction brochure.
Enable remote supportability: Remote supportability is the best way to ensure seamless interaction and maximum efficiency in root cause analysis. You will need to include the deployment of supportability tools in your BI4 upgrade plans. Please visit the remote supportability portal to learn more and get started.
Leverage your premium contract: many additonal services are available through premium support engagement. Specifically the support of a TQM throughout the upgrade project can be valuable. Visit the support offerings page for more information. |
| SAP Services and SAP Partners | By nature, an upgrade project is going to be unique. In most cases there will only be one upgrade of your BI landscape to BI4. It bascially means that a lot of the experience acquired by your team at the expense of your own project has a questionable return on investment.
So even if you generally don't look at external help, engaging services for an upgrade project should be seriously considered.
Also, please keep in mind that the technical execution of the upgrade is actually the easiest part. If you're going to seek limited help, give priority to the areas discussed above: assessment, planning, sizing, architecture etc...
Check out this video for more on SAP upgrade services |