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When I was in Marrakech, Morocco last year, I stayed at a wonderful Riad in the Old Medina. The Medina is the historic walled city, centuries old and full of tiny narrow streets and passageways. It is packed with tiny shops, tanneries, ancient sites, food places and people’s homes and is a place to experience the real Morocco.
Being the adventurer I am, I just wanted to go off and explore the place myself but my level-headed wife and the staff at the Riad suggested we get a guide. Their rationale was that the Medina is truly a maze and with very little signage it’s super easy to get lost. In addition, if you want to see as much as possible, make a checklist and go with someone who knows the place.
They were right and we got an amazing tour of the Marrakech Medina and saw more than I ever thought possible in just 5 hours.
Performing BusinessObjects upgrades is very similar to touring the Marrakech Medina. Whether it is an upgrade from a previous release or just a Service Pack upgrade, if you have not done it before and are not intimately familiar with all the options and possibilities, you can often get lost or stuck and waste an inordinate amount of time.
Yes, SAP does provide basic documentation, and you can find blogs and articles on-line, but it is rare to find two installations that are the same as there are so many different environmental factors, configuration requirements and software application mixes making each installation unique. This has been compounded by a host of new requirements for most BusinessObjects deployments today including virtual or cloud deployments, single sign-on and multi-factor authentication and white-listing to avoid virus scanner issues. All this on top of the different operating systems, database types and versions and a multitude of integration options. This will often lead to unique issues and challenges.
To engage an experienced BusinessObjects solution provider or consultancy can be expensive if you ask them to do the entire upgrade. However, that is not always necessary and often the best approach is to split the tasks between yourself and the solution provider.
The solution provider might well be the expert on BusinessObjects installs and upgrades, but you are the expert on your own unique environment so all you really need is a guide to show you the best way to perform the upgrade. This is both expeditious and cost-efficient.
So, for example, you may have a 3-tier deployment: Production, QA Test, and Development. The Solution Provider can install and upgrade just one deployment and provide knowledge transfer so you could handle the other two.
Maybe you have never implemented single sign-on or multi-factor authentication in BusinessObjects before so just ask the Solution Provider to do those parts for you and use it as a learning exercise.
With BusinessObjects BI 4.2 moving to end-of-life on December 31, it is really important to upgrade to BI 4.3, if you have not done so already. This will require installing on new VM’s or servers.
Likewise, many BI 4.3 customers would like to upgrade to the current Service Pack, SP4, and take advantage of new features in Web Intelligence like the new Data Tab for combining, transforming and profiling different data sources and the new auto-refresh option when using Webi as a data source. This Service Pack to Service Pack upgrade may be done in-place and only takes a few hours.
So bottom line is to consider getting a guide when you are ready to do a BusinessObjects upgrade and save yourself a lot of time and frustration.
Will BusinessObjects always be tricky to upgrade? Well, SAP have heard the frustrations of many customers and one of the improvements promised for BI 2025, the next major release of BusinessObjects, is an easier and simpler upgrade process. So let’s see.
In the meantime, when you are ready, our team is experienced and more than ready to help you navigate the (upgrade) path.
One of our most popular offerings for upgrades is our blocks of Green Hours. You can purchase prepaid blocks of 50 remote service hours as and when you need them that you can use for any BusinessObjects services for up to a 12-month period, InfoSol plants a tree for every hour purchased so you can help the planet at the same time.
