State of the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 Upgrade - January 2016

[dallas_marks]

Happy New Year!

The end of 2015 meant the end of mainstream support for SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 and SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0. However, end of support does not mean end of the world, according to SAP Mentor Greg Myers (see related article, End of Support Does Not Equal End of World). However, some organizations may be affected by Microsoft's decision to stop supporting Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10 as of today, January 12, 2016 (see Microsoft's official statement or SAP KB 2264238). Keep in mind that later editions of XI 3.1, BI 4.0 and BI 4.1 all provide IE 11 support (see related SCN article, SAP Support for Internet Explorer 11 Can Head Off Security Woes).

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence BI 4.1 SP7

The most recent release of the BI 4.1 platform is Support Pack 7, which has all of the goodies of Support Pack 6 (see Christian Ah-Soon's excellent write-up) and adds support for Windows 10 on the desktop and Suse Linux 12 and Red Hat 7 on the server. However, there are some curious omissions in the supported platforms document, most notably Microsoft Office 2016 and the latest releases of the Adobe Flash player (version 17 is the highest version supported but version 20 is the highest version shipping).

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence BI 4.2

While still not generally available (see related SCN Article, Waiting for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2), SAP released BI 4.2 Support Pack 1 at the end of 2015. Some customers have opted to enroll in the ramp-up program, although most will likely wait for Support Pack 2, which will be the GA release. BI 4.2 promises a lot of new features (see related article, What's New in SAP BI 4.2), plus improved upgrade workflows and linked universe support for those customers still on earlier releases.

What now?

Most organizations that use SAP BI should have two platform objectives for 2016 - adopting SAP Lumira in their BI landscape and upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.2. Unless you are actively patching up to address a bug or gain platform support (such as IE11 support), I suggest waiting for the general availability of BI 4.2. If you've never made the leap to BI4, it's time to get off of now-unsupported software. Consider entering the early adopter program for BI 4.2 and take advantage of its upgrade process improvements, knowing that the GA patch will be waiting for you before it's time to go live.

What are your organization's BI priorities in 2016?