360Suite Presents:

Jawahar Konduru and How ARI

Fleet Manages 1,500,000

SAP BusinessObjects Reports

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Content Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 2

Key numbers of Business Objects at ARI fleet .................................................................... 2

ARI’s top 2 challenges in managing 1,500,000 reports ................................................... 2

Business Objects Migration to 4.2 ...................................................................................... 3

Managing 1,500,000 reports daily ..................................................................................... 4

ROI with 360Suite ........................................................................................................................ 6

About Jawahar: (AKA, Captain Jawahar - Only Admin for 1.5M reports) ............... 6

About ARI fleet ........................................................................................................................... 6

About 360suite ............................................................................................................................ 6

Screenshots .................................................................................................................................. 7

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Introduction SAP BusinessObjects has been in use since 2000 with BO6. Back in the day, we started as

a small deployment with a need to do reporting on our fleet management business, but

over the years, Business Objects has taken more and more place due to the nature of

our business. Fleet Management requires an excellent reporting solution, as by nature it

works around flux and is very margin sensitive.

At present, ARI fleet is using SAP BusinessObjects as the primary reporting tool for internal

and external clients in areas such as Billing, Telematics, Budget, Fleet Utilization, etc.

Key numbers of Business Objects at ARI fleet

ARI fleet currently has a deployment of 1,500,000 Reports

o 80% Deski with FHSQL (Not fun!)

o 20% are Webi

Current versions of SAP BusinessObjects used are XI 3.1 and BI 4.1.

Migration to 4.2 expected in 2018.

Applications used are Webi, Deski, Webi Rich Client, Explorer, Lumira, Dashboard

and Design Studio.

1 physical Production server + QA + Development for the XI 3.1 environment.

6 clustered physical/Virtual Machine Production servers + QA + Development for

the BI 4.1 environment.

About 800 reports scheduled daily and about 4,000 reports scheduled by the

end of each month.

2.5 million instances

80,000 provisioned users * Concurrent users are about 250-300 at any point of

time.

150 Production universes

SAP BI team size: 1 admin and 10 -15 report/BI developers

ARI’s top 2 challenges in managing 1,500,000 reports

Migration to BI4.2

Daily Management of SAP BusinessObjects

ARI has been working for years with 360Suite

Why? The reason is simple... We can hire people that do SDK work but at the end:

It is more expensive.

SDK work needs to be maintained for each Service Pack. As you know, each

Service Pack is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to

get. Then eventually, you will have to fix it.

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360Suite has been a solution for SAP BusinessObjects since XIR2

360Suite has 40 engineers dedicated to doing SDK work

360Suite has a quick turnaround time when there is a problem

We save 70% time using 360Suite tools

Business Objects Migration to 4.2

When you have 1,500,000 reports to migrate this is rather challenging. But when you

consider that out of 1,500,000, more than 1,200,000 are Deski, this is even more

challenging and definitely not something to look forward to. You have to establish a

very clear plan to industrialize the migration process with a tight budget, and still have

full availability.

Instead, we use 360suite to help us daily to avoid those obstacles

1. Pre-Upgrade

a. Content Assessment / Usage Statistics / Impact Analysis

1. Memory & Usage Memory

2. Usage/Non-usage of Universes, Reports and Objects

3. Count/Size of public folders, inboxes, report instances

4. Who is connecting or never connecting?

5. What applications are being used?

b. Backup

1. 1 empty folder on a server NAS/SAN with enough free space

2. SMTP server properties for email notifications

3. Scheduling backup jobs – at root level for small BO and several jobs for

large installations (universes, reports and users)

4. Daily backup task.

c. Backup and Recovery

Backup is critical during a migration/upgrade, if something is corrupted

(and it happens) you need to have the possibility to quickly rollback the

entire deployment, Universe/Object to ensure business continuity. Ability

to rollback versions with a VM is very handy.

Using the 360Suite you can: restore any object one by one (universe,

personal & corporate documents, users, etc.), rollback/undo any

action/object and automate cleaning. There is no need to backup Input

& Output FRS and CMS DB and sync them all. Additionally, there are 5

backup versions available, with the option to increase or decrease this

number.

d. Cleanup unnecessary content:

1. Identify unused reports/duplicate reports

2. Cleanup Instances - Oldest and unused

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3. Is it necessary to migrate all user inboxes?

4. Unused objects and universes

e. Archive

Archiving non-upgraded content is being managed to meet regulatory

needs.

2. Upgrade

a. Prototyping phase:

Like in any industry before you go into mass production, you better have

prototypes and QA work. Such wording is a little old for an IT department,

but we have no choice. To perform this task, we took typical and random

reports, then tested the upgrade.

b. Test phase:

To test prototypes, we have put in place automated regression testing to

check for data and report accuracy. To achieve that we used the

360Bind regression testing tool. Without this tool, we would have needed

an army of consultants and 20+ people. This allowed us to avoid

outsourcing this work and to keep sensitive data in-house. 360 is even able

to push such reports to actual report owners so that only people with

proper credentials can see them.

3. Analysis phase

Report Conversion tool

- You never reach 100%. Your goal is to come as close as possible. Keep in mind,

even if you have 100% it does not mean you do not have regressions. The Goal

we have is to be as close as possible to 100% due to cleanup, query stripping,

and removing duplicated reports.

FHSQL – We need to be able to bulk-repoint Webi documents from 1 FHSQL to

another (lost if using Report Conversion Tool)

Promotion – We have found out that is always challenging.

Compare all metadata, universes, objects, and Security. Take snapshots before

and after the migration to check what has been modified, deleted, or created.

This helps us pinpoint issues and understand certain behaviors.

4. Implement

With a proper plan and preparation implemented, our migration is much

smoother. The biggest challenge now is to expect and plan accordingly for

problems that will inevitably come up. Keep in mind, we only have 1 consultant

to help us in this process, and still have the same amount of daily BI work.

Managing 1,500,000 reports daily

1. Challenges

IT perspective:

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Managing 1,500,000 reports is difficult. As for the migration, you need to

schedule all the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly work with precise planning.

Each step that can be simplified is automated and optimized.

Here again we use 360Suite.

Business perspective:

Always adapt to business needs and make them aware of the challenges.

Without proper understanding of Business needs, there is no way you can

have a happy deployment. A happy deployment, without constant

feedback from the Business and continuous improvements, creates more

challenges that keep you from growing. For example, for many reasons

unfinished reports or reports with improper data can be blasted. As a result,

the Business asks to delete reports in users’ inboxes. With the help of 360Suite

Support we had this feature developed to support the business.

Maintain continuity.

Make sure your upgrades do not happen at the time the Business needs

reporting. For us it is at the end of the month.

Be sure you have a Plan B

2. Monitoring

Real-time view without a report, i.e. users, objects, universes, security with bulk

update capabilities.

Ability to log into more than 1 BO environment for side-by-side comparisons

and content transfers; promotion using Drag and Drop for one-shot scenarios,

or scheduled promotions for regular tasks.

3. Backup - Schedule daily backup jobs at root level for small BO environments,

and several jobs for large installations (universes, reports and users). ARI is using a

VM for constant backup. 360Suite is being used in the event a VM is corrupted,

giving us full control of the recycle bin (handy for personal documents), and in

case of disaster recovery

4. Cleanup - Can be automated. ARI is currently working on implementing

Automated Archiving & Cleanup, to control the growth of their environment.

360Suite is used to meet these goals.

5. Archiving - We Archive to maintain efficiency, and address regulatory needs.

360Suite gives us the capability to archive instances and automate archiving

based on usage with the possibility to rollback.

6. Scheduling - Due to ARI’s business, bursting is a critical component of its activity.

7. Security - The 360Suite maps & documents all security in SAP BusinessObjects,

including double inherited and granular rights.

8. Data accuracy- After the upgrade, 360Suite will be used to manage regression

testing, compare Universes/Reports/Objects, and metadata management for

quality & regulatory needs.

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ROI with 360Suite

$500,000 saved (conservatively, imagine cost per report is > 1USD).

SDK work would be too expensive to develop and maintain.

Spare 10 consultants for the migration.

Ability to develop features.

70% time saved daily.

Avoid 2 extra full-time admins.

Imagine the cost of handling 1,500,000 reports!

About Jawahar: (AKA, Captain Jawahar - Only Admin for

1.5M reports)

Jawahar has been working at ARI since 2014. He is the BI Technical Lead and manages

BI, ETL and other SAP tools and environments. Jawahar has 12 years of experience on

SAP BusinessObjects. Jawahar is the only administrator at ARI. ARI has one of the largest

SAP BusinessObjects report deployments in the world.

About ARI fleet

ARI, a Holman Enterprises company, has revolutionized fleet management with

technology that enables organizations around the world to realize new levels of

efficiency and value by leveraging the power of data through the ARI insights® portal.

Founded in 1948, ARI, now the largest family owned company in the industry, has

continuously uncovered new ways for fleet managers to translate their fleets’ data into

decreased costs and improved driver safety. ARI manages more than 1.4 million

vehicles in North America, the UK and Europe and, together with its strategic partners,

2.4 million vehicles worldwide. Headquartered in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, ARI has

been recognized as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” by Fortune magazine

for five years in a row.

About 360suite

360Suite of Tools for SAP BusinessObjects and SAP BW. 360Suite is being used by more

than 2,000,000 SAP end-users for small to large deployments (100 to over 92,000

Users). With the Business Objects Co-founder believing in us, he joined GB&Smith’s

360Suite Board of Directors. 360Suite offers solutions for Metadata & Impact Analysis ("BI

on BI"), Backup, Promotion, Security Administration, Bulk CMS & Universe Updates,

Scheduling & Bursting, Automated Regression Testing, Migration Assessments, Sizing,

etc.

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Our customers are constantly finding new ROI, whether it is gaining efficiency,

increased security, or mitigated general risk and compliance. The City of Chicago

saved $300K on their migration from 3.1 to 4.2. Vanderbilt decreased administration

time by 75%. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics saved over 1,000 Man-Hours & $120K in the

first year of Metadata Analysis alone during their migration from SAP BusinessObjects on

Oracle to HANA.

GB&SMITH was founded in 2007 with customers in >30 countries, offices in USA, Canada,

France, and UK. We have Customers from SMB’s, Federal Agencies, to Fortune 500

companies.

360Suite are awesome tools with outstanding support!

Screenshots

Security:

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Automated Regression Testing:

Platform Auditing:

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Platform Auto-clean:

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Monitoring and Alerting:

Archiving Instances: