Case study · Local Government
Migrating a live SAP BusinessObjects platform, without missing a beat
Upgrading Barnet Council's Business Objects environment from 4.2 to 4.3, live, with over 3,000 reports to migrate and zero room for downtime.
SAP Data Services
Sybase IQ Data Warehouse
3,000+
Reports migrated, right first time
40+
Users live on day one, no disruption
10
Data Services repositories rebuilt & re-mapped
The client
Barnet London Borough Council is the local authority responsible for governing the London Borough of Barnet in Greater London, with a population of just over 395,000, one of the largest council areas in Greater London.
They had invested in SAP Business Objects as the reporting architecture for their social care data, deployed on SAP Business Intelligence Platform 4.2 with SAP Data Services for integration and Sybase IQ as the data warehouse. An imminent upgrade to other vital systems meant it was time to move to Business Objects 4.3 and migrate the content across.
The challenges
- •Business continuity: the most recent, supported version of SAP Business Objects on modern architecture, with minimal downtime for existing services.
- •Complex stakeholder management: a multi-organisation initiative bringing together end users, in-house IT and external parties, needing regular, clear communication on planning and progress.
- •Time constraints: the migration was part of a bigger project with very little contingency for delay.
- •Report and universe migration: Barnet’s existing, mature environment had over 3,000 reports to migrate.
- •Data Services: multiple job repositories, combining over 300 jobs called and scheduled from 10 different sources, all needing to be rebuilt, validated, tested and re-mapped to the Sybase IQ data warehouse.
What we delivered
- ✓Installed and configured a new SAP Business Intelligence Platform 4.3 deployment, plus the SAP Data Services 4.3 add-on.
- ✓Assessed, validated and migrated all 3,000 existing reports in a full, accurate migration first time, including 10 Data Services repositories re-mapped to every database source and target.
- ✓Migrated the security structure and model from the legacy system, with all 40+ users able to log in and work exactly as before.
- ✓Worked as a trusted SAP BI expert inside a multi-agency transformation project, as one seamless team with the client.
The outcome
- ✓Upgraded an enterprise-wide application onto new infrastructure with a seamless transition, so the council could focus on serving its citizens rather than the migration.
- ✓Data quality and integrity were robustly checked, verified and moved safely to the new server, meeting the previously defined security model.
- ✓Schedule, budget and risk were all managed effectively across multiple stakeholders, to a successful delivery.
The founder’s take
“Barnet's teams needed their reporting to keep working exactly as before, on the day we switched it over. The real test of a migration isn't whether it's technically complete. It's whether anyone downstream even notices it happened.”
Thomas Madden
Founder & CEO, IO Analytics