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

Migrate from SAP BO  to  Power BI , Automatically, At the flat rate Ellipsys assisted the ADEO/Leroy Merlin Group in the massive simplification of its SAP BO platform and then in the migration of its data assets to Power BI (and Looker) by automating the process, on a fixed-price basis. We are sharing the main aspects with you.     SAP BO  : an uncertain roadmap SAP Business Objects reportedly holds more than 5% market share in the BI market with almost 30,000 customers worldwide (6Sense).   However, the platform is navigating in a certain amount of uncertainty: Version 4.2 will reach the 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 late 2025.  SAP plans to release the first version of SAP Business Objects BI 2025 in the fourth quarter of 2024. Details are not yet fully known. However, it has been specified that certain components will not be included in the BI 2025 version, including the Universe Design Tool (for building UNVs), multi-source universes, etc.   In general, it can be considered that SAP's stated intention is to see its customers move to SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC). However, this ambition does not appear to be entirely shared.  For what ? :  Self-service BI is popular with business teams, but also with IT, which, willingly or unwillingly, is relinquishing some control to the business. And SAP BO is precisely not a self-service BI solution. It's a very good solution, but perceived as outdated.      Power BI , a success that continues unabated Power BI, for its part, is holding its own, taking advantage of Microsoft's firepower, synergies in Azure and functional proximity with Excel. The number of users is estimated at 80,000 companies worldwide, with a market share of 15% and outrageous growth (6sense).   Migrating from SAP BO  to  Power BI? We, on our side, are seeing a fairly noticeable and specific shift from SAP BO to Power BI. But for those looking to move away from SAP Business Objects (BO), a monumental undertaking lies ahead: some companies we work with have tens of thousands of BO dashboards in production. If the project has to be carried out manually, the cost can be exorbitant, with a highly uncertain outcome.   Automate  the process! In this context, 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, and then to migrate it to Power BI (and Looker).   Below are the  6 key points  of our methodology for this type of project. We conduct 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? Often, more than 90% of the SAP BO platform in the source code is not, or is no longer, in use.   {openAudit}, our software, makes it possible to significantly reduce the scope of SAP BO dashboards to be migrated, by allowing massive archives prior to migration. Outdated or error-containing SAP Business Objects (BO) dashboards are detected. {openAudit} allows them to be archived by creating individual BIAR files (BO archive format). They can then be permanently deleted. However, we keep a history of BO's intelligence (across its different versions). So nothing is lost.    2.  A complete  reverse engineering  of the BO platform to be migrated   SAP BO dashboards are often extremely complex due to the platform's long history.  This complexity must be addressed both in terms of the dashboard's intelligence and the data sources. 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 you to link "business" terms to technical considerations in a database, enabling teams to build dashboards independently.    BO is a proven and robust technology which - with its (very) long experience with 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, so that they can autonomously 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.   Datasets can be considered the first layer of data exposure for Power BI users. This layer offers a simple organization of business information by abstracting away the 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 we encounter when there is a form of urgency to migrate: end of the license contract for example. The goal will be to reproduce the useful SAP BO dashboards, in an almost identical way, in the target Power BI environment.    {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 increasing 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 source database tables and views or into Power BI dashboards, using simple SQL and partially using SQL / DAX & PowerQuery.   These complex queries will therefore potentially only be executed once, thus reducing costs, simplifying maintenance, and accelerating consultations.   6.  Validate the  absence of regression {openAudit} will run BO dashboards and Power BI dashboards (after the technical migration) with analogous prompt values, which will allow for mass comparisons with statistical tools.     Conclusion   The decommissioning of SAP is becoming a major issue for many companies these days: the tool is perceived as being at the end of its life, poorly adapted to Cloud use and the growing desire to move towards "self BI".   However, these migrations are not easy to implement because these platforms have been around for so long: they have therefore accumulated complexity. The {openAudit} migration engine automates the transcription of SAP BO to Power BI by analyzing all the nuances of the source data to faithfully reproduce it in the target. An interesting option is to start with only the semantic layer to create the conditions for a turnkey "self-service BI" solution.    {openAudit}'s ability to optimize the BO platform and then factorize the intelligence into the target platform allows for a considerable increase in intelligibility and performance. Massive non-regression testing is invaluable for quickly reaching an optimum, making this migration a true 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.