Five Good Reasons For A Business Objects Migration Project

Is it time for a Business Objects migration project at your company? If employees use business intelligence (BI) tools from Business Objects to slice and dice enterprise data and produce reports and metrics on corporate performance, the answer is likely to be a resounding ?Yes'.

In less than a year, the company will end support for older versions of its software, including BusinessObjects versions 5 and 6 and Crystal Reports versions 6 to 10. From June 2008, in fact, the latest version of its technology, BusinessObjects XI R2, will become the only supported version.

As a result, XI migration is now a high priority for many companies, reports Mike Perks, senior consultant on the business information services team at Logicalis.

But it is also a ""substantial challenge"", he adds. ""In our experience, a Business Objects migration project typically involves purchasing and installing new hardware, migrating complex reports, and setting up new security models. Above all, you need an in-depth understanding of data management issues and the information needs of the workforce in question,"" he says.

For these reasons, Logicalis been asked to work with several clients, including a major high street retailer, to smooth the transition.

Despite the effort involved, however, there are five good reasons to migrate:

1) Compliance - if you're not using BusinessObjects XI R2, you won't be supported and won't be able to take advantage of new technology and updates.

2) Improved functionality - the new product offers enhanced Web-based business intelligence, dashboard capabilities that present a simplified view of key performance indicators (KPIs), and integration with Microsoft Office, so that information can be presented to users via familiar formats such as PowerPoint, Excel and Word.

3) Future proofing - subsequent migrations to newer Business Objects technology will become easier if you're running the latest version.

4) Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) - the new product combines both the popular BusinessObjects and Crystal reporting tools, so that companies can standardise on a single toolset, lowering TCO by reducing maintenance, hardware, end-user training and support costs. Also, because full reporting capabilities can be accessed via a simple web browser, there's no need for software to be downloaded onto users' PCs, which reduces desktop support costs.

5) Performance, reliability, scaleability ? the distributed architecture of the new product makes BusinessObjects XI R2 more robust, reliable and easier to scale vertically or horizontally than earlier versions.