the benefits of upgrading

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Welcome to Forum!The Benefits of Upgrading to IBM Cognos Planning 8.2 and 8.3

Anthony D’Ugo – Deloitte

Johnathan Hodge – Cognos, an IBM Company

Anthony D’Ugo, Deloitte

Putting an upgrade into perspective

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Putting it into perspective

> Why upgrade?

> Upgrade approaches

> Making the decision to upgrade

> Effort analysis

> Identifying “quick wins”

> Defining the roadmap

> Getting it done

Why upgrade?

Reasons for the upgrade

Business reasons(Strategic)


> Protect investment in the solution

> Use the upgrade project as an opportunity to align with new business initiatives or other organizational changes

> Further alignment with budgeting and forecasting leading practices

> Leverage new functionality


Technological reasons(Tactical)

> Use the upgrade project as an opportunity to align with new technology initiatives

> Opportunity to eliminate any customizations and reduce cost of ownership

> Align with infrastructure updates

> Align with IBM Cognos supported versions

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Upgrade approaches

Depending on the strategic intent, various upgrade approaches are conceivable resulting in different tasks and workloads, project durations and ultimately costs

> Go “live” with the new version in a short time

> Implement it as it comes

> Do not want any disruption to the business

> Synchronize with infrastructure releases (Vista compatibility)

> Align with IBM Cognos supported versions

Base Upgrade Only

> Take advantage of quick wins and harvest “low hanging fruits”

> Maximize short-term ROI

> The organization can absorb some process changes

> Reasonable resources availability

Base Upgrade + “Quick Wins”

> Start with a Base Upgrade Only, or include some “Quick Wins” as well, and take advantage of other features in future phases

> Spread investment over a wider timeframe

> Avoid “big bang” and distributes change impact over a longer period of time

Phased Approach

> Use the upgrade project as an opportunity to align with new business initiatives or other organizational changes

> Looking to benefit from some economies of scale

Beyond an Upgrade

Making the decision to upgrade

Possibly Definitely

Not Likely Most Likely

Value

Ris

k M

itig

atio

n

> Use a structured decision framework

> Consider both the business and technological value each new feature will provide your organization

> Consider the risks each new feature will help mitigate/avoid

Upgrade

BaseUpgrade

DataValidations

Improved Commentary

Macros in C8

Incremental Publish

PlanningDeployment/

Portability

New DataSources

SecurityAuthentication

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Effort Analysis

Analyst Model

ContributorConfiguration

Cognos 8 Configuration

Testing and Tuning

End User Training

Process Change

ManagementHardware

Infrastructure Software

Base Upgrade

Data Validations

Improved Commentary

Macros in C8

Incremental Publish

Planning Deployment/Portability

New Data Sources

Security Authentication

?

?

?

?

?

Medium HighLow No ExpectedEffort ? Conditional

Testing is easy…and other myths

> Common myths about testing:

• “Quality Assurance is the same as testing.”

• “The goal of software testing is to be 100% defect-free.”

• “Testing is easy, anyone can do it.”

> Visit our booth at Performance World for a free electronic copy of this booklet or send an email to [email protected] and request a copy

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Identifying “quick wins”

Value

Eff

ort

> Estimate effort relative to the expected business and technological value

Base Upgrade + “Quick Wins”

Future Phase(s)

New DataSources

SecurityAuthentication

BaseUpgrade

DataValidations

Improved Commentary

Macros in C8

Incremental Publish

PlanningDeployment/Portability

Defining the roadmap

FY 2010

FY 2009FY 2008

Q4Q2 Q3 Q1Q4Q1Q3

Funding Constraints

Resource Constraints

Infrastructure Software Updates

New Business Initiatives

Version Release Schedule

Budget/Forecast Cycles

Q2Q1

8.3 ? ?

Base Upgrade +

“Quick Wins”

Ph

ase I

New Data

Sources

Ph

ase II

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Getting it done

Perform rigorous testing of the including

Formal integration testing

Performance testing

User Acceptance Testing is recommended in order to

Minimise risk of change impact

Achieve user buy-in

Obtain user validation

Test

End user training

Organizational communication and change management

Cut-over to production

Go-live support

DeployUpgrade

AssessmentAnd Plan

Conduct an upgrade assessment

Determine the upgrade scope, benefits and effort.

Define overall upgrade approach, supported by a detailed project plan and resource model.

Complete enhancements to migrated components

Prepare for rigorous testing prior to release

Prepare Upgrade

Establish an upgraded development environment

Certify that the new upgraded environment is a stable replica of the production instance

Johnathan Hodge, Cognos

Capabilities and Benefits of IBM Cognos 8 Planning v3

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Cognos Upgrade

Platform ImprovementsIBM Cognos 8 Planning 8.3

Leverage 3rd party authentication

Then Now

Cognos Series 7 (Access Manager)

Cognos Planning 7.2/7.3/8.1

Compatible authentication providers:•Active Directory•Cognos Series 7 (Access Manager)•LDAP•Windows NTLM•Netegrity SiteMinder•SAP•Custom Java Provider

IBM Cognos 8 Planning 8.3

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Greater Flexibility in Security Configuration

7.1 7.2 7.3/8.1

Classic Security Enterprise SecurityUsers Only

GroupsRoles

UsersGroups Only

Roles

UsersGroupsRoles

Then NowIBM Cognos 8 Planning 8.3

Share Security Across IBM Cognos 8

Then Now

Cognos Analyst

Cognos Contributor

Cognos Report Studio

Cognos Analysis Studio

Cognos Analyst

Cognos Contributor

Cognos Report Studio

Cognos Analysis Studio

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Cognos Upgrade

Platform ImprovementsIBM Cognos 8 Planning 8.3

Leveraging IBM Cognos 8 Security in IBM Cognos 8 Planning 8.3

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Sharing servers with other IBM Cognos 8 products, Load balancing, Fail-over

Then Now

Cognos Analyst

Cognos Contributor

Cognos BI

Servers

Cognos Analyst

Cognos Contributor

Cognos BI

Servers

Platform Improvements: Benefits

• Leverage existing C8 hardware investments

• Central and shared administration of C8 content

• Leverage investment in existing security infrastructure

• Greater flexibility and simplification of Planning-specific security

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Cognos Upgrade

Reporting and Publishing EnhancementsIBM Cognos 8 Planning 8.3

Incremental Publish

Publish change node only

Then Now

Changed Node

All nodes published

Changed Node

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Cognos Upgrade

Reporting and Publishing Enhancements

IBM Cognos 8 Planning 8.3

Incremental Publish

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Incremental Publish

Incremental Publish

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Incremental Publish

Publishing Attached Document Meta-Data

Cognos Contributor Planning

Publish Container

• Attachment name

• Attachment comments

• Attachment date

• Attachment file size

• User ID

• Cell location of attachment

• Elist attached to

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Reporting and Publishing Enhancements: Benefits

• Scalable near-realtime data access to entire planning application data set

• More efficient use of hardware

• Shorter batch processes

• Richer report and ETL content

Cognos Upgrade

Managing ApplicationsIBM Cognos 8 Planning 8.3

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New Data Sources

SAP BW

mySAP ERP

(prev. R/3)

Other Relational database

OLAP Cubes (i.e..

PowerPlay, Essbase)

Data Warehouse

(i.e. Teradata)

Excel

Framework Manager & Query Engine

Cognos Analyst

Contributor Datastore

Metadata & Data Data

Cognos Upgrade

IBM Cognos 8 Planning 8.3Managing Applications

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Managing Applications: Benefits

New Data Sources

•Direct access from Cognos Planning 8.3 to C8 data sources, inc. SAP BW.

• Flexibility and control to IT user to expose to the business user only what is required

• Business user is sheltered against complexity

• Data assets modelled once and used consistently across C8

Macro Execution in IBM Cognos 8

Cognos Connection

Event StudioELSE

Contributor Administration

Console

Publish

Admin Links

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Cognos Upgrade



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Macro Execution in C8

• IT can schedule in Cognos Connection without needing to understand Planning

• Easy to chain and schedule Contributor and Analyst macros together for an end-to end process

• Support for conditional process management using Event Studio

Planning deployment/portability

Test Environment Production Environment

Test Environment Production Environment

Version 8.1 and

Prior

Version 8.2 and

After

Manual Process

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Cognos Upgrade



Deployments• Better support for Dev/Test/Prod environments reducing human error and effort/cost

• Easier to package environment content to share internally or with Cognos Support

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Cognos Upgrade

Usability ImprovementsIBM Cognos 8 Planning 8.3

Contributor Data validations

Cognos Contributor

Validation checks and rules

Pass

Fail

Stop Warning

or

Submit

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Cognos Upgrade

IBM Cognos 8 Planning 8.3Usability Improvements

Usability Improvements: Benefits

Validations•Eliminates administrator cross checking

•Increases quality of submission

• Facilitates enforcement of corporate policies

• Decreases planning cycle time

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Enhanced Commentary

Cognos ContributorAttachmentAttachment Types

Excel

Word

PowerPoint

Cognos Upgrade


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Copy Commentary Within Links

Administration, System or Local link

Cognos Upgrade


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Copy Commentary

Copy Commentary

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Copy Commentary

Usability Improvements: Benefits

Commentary• Enable end-users to leverage existing resources and avoid duplication of information• Improve process through reduced reviewer confusion and queries around plan submissions• Retain commentary when opening/closing versions

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Cognos Upgrade

General ImprovementsIBM Cognos 8 Planning 8.3

General Improvements

• Expanded Conformance

• Improved Navigation and Administration Experience

• Ability to Publish Translations

• PDS Scalability

• Improved performance of Admin Console

• Leverage additional reporting capabilities of the 8.3 Platform

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Questions?

andugo

Accepted

the benefits of upgrading

Technology