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laura_vega
Advisor
Advisor

Introduction


In my recent post, UNV is dead, long live UNX, I made the point that the Universe Design Tool (UDT) and the UNV universe will not be supported after 2027. That may sound like a long time, but it is not, especially if you want to make an orderly and efficient transition to UNX.

In my post, I mentioned that an SAP partner solution could help make that transition easier and more orderly. A few days later, I had a conversation with the people from our long-time partner APOS,  who offer a solution to meet this upgrade need.

I have asked to their COO Allan Pym to give me a few examples of their successful customer projects and to explain me how their Migrator for Web Intelligence is concretely used.

 

A Timely, Ordered Transition to UNX


APOS COO Allan Pym told me that they had already worked with quite a few SAP customers to help them make the switch to UNX. He said one of the most common strategies used by these customers was to do the conversion over an extended period of time, business unit by business unit. He said this strategy, and the automation provided by their Migrator for Web Intelligence, made it possible for these customers to have an orderly transition while managing their resources well.
Allan told me:

"One organization we are working with, an insurance company that operates in the United States and Canada, has about 30,000 reports to process, and they see it as a 2-year project, working business unit by business unit. They are managing a controlled migration as one project among many other projects, in order to minimize time and resource disruptions."

Allan’s comments matched my own perception of the road ahead for SAP BusinessObjects customers.

Automation to Simplify Your Migration


APOS Solution Consulting Manager Alan Golding demonstrated for me how the APOS solution automates the Web Intelligence migration process. You know already that the core of the upgrade process is to convert UNV universes to UNX and then repoint the Web Intelligence documents from the old UNV universe to the new UNX universe.

Of course, the more universes and reports you have, the more complicated this simple process gets. I know many customers have thousands of reports, sometimes 10s of thousands and sometimes 100s of thousands, and that is why automation is so important for a smooth and less labor-intensive migration.

Alan showed me the automated process from start to finish in the APOS solution. It is a project-based solution, so you can handle as much or as little in each project as fits your conversion strategy. The process consists of these steps:

  • Scan

  • Convert universes

  • Repoint Web Intelligence reports

  • Validate

  • Commit


One of the things that stands out for me most was the APOS solution’s scanning capabilities. It lets you build an inventory of your system very easily. Yes, you want to know which reports are connected to which universes, but you also want to know which reports are actually in use so you can prioritize them for migration, and maybe reduce the size of your migration. Alan showed me there are a lot of scanning and granular selection options available.

Use Cases


I asked how this tool has worked for their customers and Allan described a project with a major university in the United States which had 80 UNV universes and 50,000 Web Intelligence documents in their deployment.  The automation of the APOS solution allowed this UNX upgrade project to be completed in a timely manner, despite the fact that the customer had limited staff resources that they could involve the project.

Another project mentioned was with a global technology manufacturer who had a much larger UNX adoption project.  That customer, whose phase 1 project included approximately 250 thousand Web Intelligence reports, needed to accomplish the UNX upgrade as part of the move of their primary data source from a legacy data system to Snowflake cloud data warehouse.  The size and scope of this project made effective automation an absolute requirement, and the APOS solution has been instrumental in making this project a success.
APOS provided links to more details about these specific customer projects here and here.

 

Conclusion


This was an overview of APOS Migrator capabilities, and I plan to write another post or two to deep dive in APOS Migrator tool features, and better explain how their solution matches with the UNV to UNX conversion requirements.

In the meanwhile, I suggest you look at a Freemium offer that APOS has. It can help you formulate your migration strategy and plan your migration: APOS BI Upgrade Freemium Offer.

 
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