Migrate from SAP BO to Power BI, Automatically, Fixed price!

Migrate from SAP BO  towards  the Power , Automatically, Fixed price Ellipsys supported the ADEO / Leroy Merlin Group in the massive simplification of its SAP BO platform and then in the migration of its useful assets to Power BI (and Looker) by automating the process, on a fixed-price basis. We share the key aspects with you.     SAP BO  : an uncertain roadmap SAP Business Objects is said to hold more than 5% market share in the BI market with almost 30,000 customers worldwide (6Sense).   However, the platform is navigating in a certain vagueness: Version 4.2 will reach end of priority 1 support at the end of 2024. Version 4.3 is expected to be supported until the end of 2027, with standard maintenance ending in the end of 2025.  SAP plans to release the first version of SAP Business Objects BI 2025 in the fourth quarter of 2024. Details are still unclear. However, it is clear that some components will not be included in the BI 2025 release, including the Universe Design Tool (for building UNVs), multi-sourced universes, and more.   Generally speaking, we can consider that SAP's stated intention is to see its customers move to SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC). But this ambition does not seem to be fully shared.  For what ? :  Self-BI is popular with business teams, but also with IT, which, willingly or not, is giving up ground to the business. And SAP BO is definitely not a self-BI-oriented solution. It's a very good solution, but it's perceived as "outdated."      Power BI , a success that continues Power BI, for its part, is doing well, taking advantage of Microsoft's firepower, the synergies in Azure and the functional proximity with Excel. The number of users is said to be 80,000 companies worldwide, with a market share of 15% and insolent growth (6sense).   Migrating from SAP BO  to  Power BI? On our side, we are seeing a fairly noticeable and specific movement of switching from SAP BO to Power BI. But for those who want to move away from SAP BO, it's a monumental undertaking looming: some companies we work with have tens of thousands of BO dashboards in production. If the project has to be managed "paper and pencil," the cost can be steep. With a more than uncertain outcome.   Automate  the process! With this in mind, Ellipsys has created an automated migration solution between SAP BO and Power BI which is based on its  {openAudit} software . This feature was implemented on behalf of the ADEO Leroy Merlin Group to reduce the SAP platform which had more than 100,000 dashboards to 8,000, then to migrate it to Power BI (and Looker).   Below are the  six key points  of our methodology for this type of project. We implement them on a fixed-price basis.   1.  Migrate  what really needs to be migrated   Why migrate tens of thousands of SAP BO dashboards, when in reality only a tiny minority are actually used? It is often more than 90% of the SAP BO platform in source that has no use, or no longer has any use.   {openAudit}, our software, allows us to significantly reduce the scope of SAP BO dashboards to be migrated, by allowing massive archives prior to migration. Outdated or error-ridden SAP BO dashboards are detected. {openAudit} allows them to be archived by creating unitary BIARs (BO archive format). They can then be permanently deleted. However, we are historicizing BO's intelligence (across its various versions). So nothing is lost.    2.  A complete  reverse engineering  of the BO platform to be migrated   SAP BO dashboards are often extremely complex given the platform's very long history.  This complexity must be addressed both in terms of dashboard intelligence and in terms of source code. The idea will be to collect everything that can be collected with our probes and parsers to capture all the intelligence underlying the SAP BO platform.   3.  A migration of the  "semantic layer"  only. The semantic layer is an abstraction layer that allows technical considerations to be linked to a database of "business" terms, to enable teams to build dashboards independently.    BO is a proven and robust technology which - with its (very) long experience of its semantic layer - has been able to organize information in companies.  The idea is therefore to allow teams to quickly start from an optimized semantic layer in the target technology, to be able to independently build the data visualization layer of tomorrow: to be able to move towards "self BI".   There isn't really a semantic layer in Power BI. Also, to transcribe the semantic layer from SAP BO to Power BI, {openAudit} reconstructs the data models in the Power BI Datasets.   We can think of Datasets as the first layer of data exposure for Power BI users. This layer provides a simple organization of business information by abstracting physical data, similar to BO Universes. Another possibility is to organize "cubes" directly in Azure SQL and/or MSSQL, to offer a more advanced organization of company information.   4.  Or a  migration “As Is”,   automated. This is a context that we encounter when there is a form of urgency to migrate: end of the license contract for example. This will involve reproducing useful SAP BO dashboards, in an almost identical way in the Power BI target.    {openAudit} will convert the objects in the Power BI data model tables of each dashboard and organize the “data preparation” to reproduce the intelligence of the BO dashboards, ideally in simple SQL.   {openAudit} will convert the layout of SAP BO dashboards directly into Power BI.   5.  Lighten  the target platform SAP BO dashboards have accumulated more and more complexity over time.  This proliferation can have real repercussions on the target platform, because there are as many refreshes as there are users. {openAudit} can potentially "move" complex queries into tables and views of the source database or into Power BI dashboards, in simple SQL and partially in SQL / DAX & PowerQuery.   These complex queries will therefore potentially only be performed once to reduce costs, facilitate maintenance and speed up consultations.   6.  Validate  non-regression {openAudit} will run BO dashboards and Power BI dashboards (after technical migration) with analog prompt values, allowing for mass comparisons with statistical tools.     Conclusion   SAP decommissioning is currently becoming a major issue for many companies: the tool is perceived as being at the end of its life, poorly suited to Cloud use and the growing desire to move towards "self BI".   Except that these migrations are not easy to implement given the length of time these platforms have been in place: they have therefore acquired complexity. The {openAudit} migration engine automates the transcription of SAP BO to Power BI by analyzing all the subtleties of the source to be able to faithfully reproduce it in the target. An interesting option is to start from only the semantic layer to create the conditions for a turnkey "self BI".    {openAudit}'s ability to optimize the BO platform and then factor the intelligence into the target platform allows for a considerable increase in intelligibility and performance. Massive non-regression testing is valuable for quickly reaching an optimum, to make this migration a real success for IT and the business. This ambitious project was carried out on a fixed-price basis on behalf of the ADEO/Leroy Merlin Group with extremely convincing results.