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Understanding the OBIEE 11g Upgrade

Upgrades are a common feature of 21st century life. The questions every individual and organisation
must ask are whether to, when to and how to do them. In order to make this decision we must
understand their impact, assess their cost, minimise downtime and risk, and maximise their benefits.
The Rittman Mead OBIEE 11g Upgrade Assessment helps the customer establish these key facts
before committing to an upgrade.
As the worlds leading Oracle Business Intelligence partner, Rittman Mead works with a wide range
of organisations using Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) who are interested in
upgrading to 11g. We typically find they are unable to estimate how much effort this will be, the impact
on their architecture and organisation, and the benefits. There is also little understanding of the
structure of the new OBIEE+ and Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation license models.
Solution:
Based on our experience, we have put together a Rittman Mead OBIEE 11g Upgrade Assessment.
This assessment is a 2 day time-boxed process, where a Rittman Mead consultant goes through a
pre-defined set of steps to provide answers to these key questions. The activities performed are:

Features presentation: Rittman Mead provide a detailed presentation, running through the
new features and different license options of OBIEE+ and the Business Intelligence Foundation,
including Maps, Mobile, Scorecarding and Essbase.

Fact find: Complete a standardised OBIEE Assessment matrix of the scope, architecture and
interfaces. The information we gather looks at the number of environments, the complexity of
the Oracle BI Repository (RPD) and Presentation Catalog, the number of reports and

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dashboards, the level of customisation, the security model, whether OBIEE is dependent on or
part of another application, integration into corporate architecture, user adoption and upstream/
downstream processes. Should there be areas that require deeper technical investigation, then
additional days can be scheduled on a time-and-materials basis to gain a more thorough
understanding.

Exit criteria definition: It is essential to ascertain what the critical success criteria of the
upgrade will be, and how it will be signed-off.

Business case evaluation: Rittman Mead will talk to the key project stakeholders to determine
the strategic and tactical goals of business intelligence within the organisation. The new
features and benefits of OBIEE and Business Intelligence Foundation can then be cross
referenced with these drivers to build to business case for the upgrade.

Adoption planning: Rittman Mead will briefly review the people and processes surrounding the
product, and define a plan to facilitate training of people, and re-engineering of processes.

Benefits:
The deliverables of the 2 days will be:

A completed OBIEE Assessment matrix;

A fixed price estimate based on the OBIEE Assessment matrix and exit criteria;
Advice on the best license options to match tactical and strategic goals;
A template business case to justify performing the upgrade;
An OBIEE 11g adoption plan.

The customer will benefit from obtaining a clear understanding of the features of the new products, an
expert technical evaluation of the effort required to perform the upgrade, the cost if an external
organisation were to be employed to perform the upgrade, a definition of the scope and complexity of
the upgrade, clear criteria from which to define the success of the upgrade and an understanding of
how the Oracle Business Intelligence tool roadmap fits with the organisation's own strategic roadmap.
Rittman Mead believes that it is vital that organisations go through this assessment process before
performing an upgrade, in order to maximise the benefit and minimise the risk of upgrade. Rittman
Mead also recognises that upgrades are not automatic, and that there has to be a clear business
justification before making the decision to proceed.

Speak to us now to find out how we can

help you with your upgrade

info@rittmanmead.com
EMEA: +44 844 669 7995
US:
+1 888 631 1410
INDIA: +91 997 256 7970
APAC: +61 407 701 537

Rittman Mead Consulting Ltd

Preston Park House

South Road,
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Rittman Mead America
3605 Sandy Plains Road
Suite 240-404, Marietta
GA 30066, USA
UK : +44 8446 697 995
US : +1 888 631-1410
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E : info@rittmanmead.com
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