There are 2 distinct high-level approaches one can consider when planning the deployment of the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, accelerated version for SAP NetWeaver BW:
- Focus on accelerated exploration only
- Fit accelerated exploration into a broader Enterprise BI strategy
With the first approach your goal is to deliver accelerated exploration to business users independently from other SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions such as Xcelsius for dashboarding or Crystal Reports for enterprise reporting. A business scenario to adopt this approach would simply be when adding accelerated exploration to an existing BEx deployment in order to reach out to new business users currently underserved by BEx.
With the second approach your goal is to add the accelerated version to an SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise deployment which might already be in place or that is being deployed simultaneously. A business scenario to adopt that approach would be when considering BI as a strategic investment to enable pervasive BI to all business users in the enterprise based on the full suite of SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions. A benefit of that latter scenario is that you will share SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise services, e.g., BI user management, across all BI functions.
It is important to note that you will leverage the blade server architecture with both approaches, though. The BW Accelerator and Explorer processes will always run on the blade servers. This is a guarantee for the high performance and linear scalability Explorer users need.
The simplified high-level diagrams below show how these 2 approaches are architected:
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Fig.1: Focus on Accelerated Exploration | Fig.2: Enterprise BI Deployment with Accelerated Exploration |
Since the accelerated version is predicated on SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator, it requires customers to run SAP NetWeaver 7.0.1 BW (SP2), so customers with an older version of BW will have to upgrade first.
In the table below I recap the different scenarios for different customer profiles to adopt and deploy the accelerated version:
Customer landscape today | Deployment Approaches | |
Focus on Accelerated Exploration | Enterprise BI Deployment with Accelerated Exploration | |
SAP BW 3.x |
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SAP NetWeaver 7.0.1 BW |
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SAP NetWeaver 7.0.1 BW + BW Accelerator |
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