“It’s More Than BI” Allstate Business Intelligence COE SAP Business. Objects deployment at Allstate Steve Bush – BI Infrastructure Alex Timberg – BI Infrastructure Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary & Confidential
“It’s More Than BI” - SAP Business. Objects deployment at Allstate Overview of SAP Business. Objects environment at Allstate Plugging into standards across a large enterprise Who’s involved? Fueling the car to make it go! What’s involved? Closer look at SAP Business. Objects environment Keeping the tires on the road…. . Who supports it? Lessons learned and Challenges for 2009 Q&A Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary & Confidential
Overview of SAP Business. Objects environment at Allstate Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary & Confidential
Overview of SAP Business. Objects environment at Allstate SAP Business. Objects reporting environment at Allstate History: Ø Business Objects 5. 1 (2000 -2003) Ø Business Objects 6. 5 (2003 -2006) Ø Crystal Enterprise 10 (2005 -2006) Ø Merged into Business Objects XIR 2 (2006) Present: Ø XI Release 2 (FP 2. 3) with plans for XI 3. 1 upgrade project in 2009 Ø ~ 150 different reporting projects, thousands of reports 40, 000 Allstate users Ø 10, 000 Web Intelligence users, 10% concurrent Ø 30, 000 Crystal Reports users, 10% concurrent Ø Peak utilization times: Monday’s; first of the month; first of the quarter; year-end How is SAP Business. Objects used? Ø Web Intelligence reports – Java based deployment Ø Crystal Reports with some custom. Net applications Ø Desktop Intelligence reports – for a number of special reporting needs Ø Xcelsius dashboards – really starting to take off ! Reporting data sources Ø Oracle, SQL Server, DB 2, SAP Ø Proof of Concepts – using XI 3. 1 against Microsoft OLAP cubes Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary & Confidential
Overview of SAP Business. Objects environment at Allstate Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary & Confidential
Plugging into standards across a large enterprise Getting Started – Let’s take a step back…. Ø Management provides overall direction for Business Intelligence (BI) reporting Ø Business community and project initiatives drive BI reporting requirements this demand continues to grow Ø IT Architects – set technology standards across the enterprise Next Step and why “It’s More Than BI” Ø Practical implementation and deployment start for delivering Business Intelligence to the enterprise Ø Many areas across the organization have to collaborate to deliver successful results * Business and Technology need to partner closely together Ø Business need drives Technology decisions Ø SAP Business. Objects (as one of those technologies) is key to delivering BI reporting at Allstate Business collaboration Ø Business client engagement team – provide communication to business areas including training and BI reporting options Ø Business Analysts and “Power” users – provide reporting requirements to the BI development teams plus provide key validation and user acceptance. Ø Data Analysts – provide understanding of project specific data and work closely with Business Analysts Ø Quality Control Analysts – provide report/data testing efforts including load testing Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary & Confidential
Fueling the car to make it go! Technology implementation Ø Overall technology teams impacting BI delivery to the enterprise Ø Network team – provide technology backbone (switches/routers/hubs/cabling) Ø Desktop Integration team – install and configure machines for all users Ø Packaging team – create standard client install packages for deploying to machines Ø Security team – enable and maintain system resource access and availability Ø More direct technology teams impacting BI delivery to the enterprise Ø BI development teams – development of universes/reports/dashboards Ø Extract Transform Load (ETL) team – scrub data into useable form to load into reporting database Ø Server team – build out “base” server images that are delivered to the BI infrastructure team Ø Database Administration (DBA) teams – provides highly available Oracle db with backup/streaming Ø Storage team – Network Attached Storage with backup and replication Ø BI Infrastructure team - provides deployment and support of SAP Business. Objects environment Ø also engages SAP Business. Objects technical support Let’s take a closer look at the SAP Business. Objects deployment at Allstate Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary & Confidential
Overview of SAP Business. Objects environment at Allstate Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary & Confidential
User machines installed with client software for connecting to the SAP Business. Objects environment at Allstate. Developer’s– Crystal Reports; Universe Designer; Desktop Intelligence; Java Runtime Environment for Web Intelligence Business User’s – Desktop Intelligence; Java Runtime Environment for Web Intelligence Ø Technology: Microsoft SMS (Systems Management Server) packages Ø Motivation: central facility for distributing software allows for easier management and installation to many machines Ø Technology partner: Desktop Integration and Packaging teams Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary and Confidential
User enters the address for accessing SAP Business. Objects Enterprise (BOE) / Info. View portal in Internet Explorer Behind Virtual Internet Protocol (VIP) address there is a load balancer that directs network traffic to one of three physical servers configured as part of load balancing for BOE users. Ø Technology: currently using Foundry load balancer with migration scheduled to F 5 load balancer Ø Motivation: allows for controlling system load across the environment with redundant equipment for failover Ø Technology partner: Network Team Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary and Confidential
Behind VIP address users are load balanced across one of three BOE web/application tier servers configured with the SAP Business. Objects applications. Ø Technology: Windows servers with IIS as the web server and Websphere 6. 0. 2 as the application server Ø Motivation: to leverage enterprise standards for Websphere configuration. Future plans to run Websphere on Unix platform. Ø Technology partner: Websphere application support Access is controlled through Microsoft Active Directory authentication with single sign-on into BOE Ø Motivation: enabling Active Directory group allows business units to own access/processes to their related reports. Ø BOE has ~ 500 AD groups Ø Technology partner: Active Directory team Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary and Confidential
SAP Business. Objects Enterprise (BOE) web application is configured to communicate with BOE Intelligence Tier. Intelligence tier hosts the Central Management Server (CMS) which is the primary service for connecting to the central repository database Ø Technology: Windows servers point to Oracle Database for CMS repository. BOE db repository ~ 3 GB; BOE Audit db ~ 33 GB Ø In fall of 2008, migration performed to OPODS platform (Oracle Pool of Database Servers) for a more robust, highly available DB. Ø Technology partner: Oracle DBA team BOE Input and Output File Repository Servers (FRS) also run on the Intelligence Tier which points to a Network Attached Storage (NAS) location ØTechnology: Network Attached Storage (NAS) for Input/Output File repository. BOE uses ~ 500 GB of space. ØTechnology partner: Storage Technology team Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary and Confidential
SAP Business. Objects CMS DB is replicated real-time to a backup CMS DB Ø Technology: Oracle Pool of Database Servers (OPODS) with data streaming from one data center to another. SAP Business. Objects Network Attached Storage (NAS) Input/Output File Repository is replicated to a failover location. Ø Technology: Network Attached Storage (NAS) replication from one data center to another every hour. Motivation: Replication of CMS DB and Input/Output File Repository to a separate data center allows for Disaster Recovery Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary and Confidential
SAP Business. Objects (BOE) cluster is then configured with Processing Tier servers in both data centers. Ø Processing servers execute the related report queries for running reports and scheduled jobs. With processing servers in multiple data centers, BOE server groups can be defined to process reports close to the project specific back-end data source. Ø Technology: project specific databases (Oracle; SQL Server; DB 2; SAP) Ø Technology partners: project specific Database Administrators; Extract Transform Load (ETL) teams Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary and Confidential
Disaster Recovery of SAP Business. Objects environment can be switched from Ohio to Illinois Data Center. Ø Priority reporting applications identified to run on this limited environment for DR purposes Ø Two Processing servers are configured with dormant Web/Application and Intelligence Tier that can be enabled in DR Ø Technology partner: Continuity Management team Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary and Confidential
Keeping the tires on the road Technology support Ø Monitoring/alerting support – let us know when things go “bump in the night or day” SAP Business. Objects reporting environment is monitored 24 x 6 (Monday through Saturday) with Sunday’s generally available with scheduled maintenance window. Info. View web portal availability is monitored by automated scripts every 15 minutes to verify uptime and general functionality for Crystal; Web Intelligence; Desktop Intelligence reports Query As A Web Service (QAAWS) is now also monitored to verify underlying web service for Xcelsius is up and available. Ø Data Center server support – Facilitate hardware support including: critical service monitoring, ”low drive space warnings”, OS patches, server backup Ø Technical Help Desk – Provide first level assistance and engage 2 nd and 3 rd level support as needed for user support Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary & Confidential
Keeping the tires on the road Lessons Learned over the past few years Ø Building an environment with a focus on redundancy/backup/failover are critical Ø Central Management Servers (CMS) on dedicated servers a must Ø engaging Business Objects technical support has been key to troubleshooting recent “clustering” errors Ø Oracle Pool of Database Servers (OPODS) proven to be a highly available, robust database for CMS repository Ø Websphere application server deployment proven successful Ø Business Objects deployment in a “tiered” environment is key for distributing load across servers Ø Installation of all key underlying software/services allows for flexible server deployment for failover/redundancy Ø Keeping technical documentation up to date is key for support Ø Overall system monitoring and alerting is necessary to increase uptime and availability Ø Key to engage the appropriate Technology resources to go from “red” to “green” Challenges for 2009 Ø Xcelsisus dashboard demand on the rise Ø Implementing development best practices and support will be key Ø SAP Business. Objects upgrade to XI 3. 1 “It’s More than BI” - it takes involvement from many teams to make it happen ! Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary & Confidential
Questions ? Contact information – Allstate Business Intelligence COE (Center of Excellence) Al Brosmith – BI Delivery Lead abrosmi@allstate. com Steve Bush – BI Infrastructure sbus 2@allstate. com Alex Timberg – BI Infrastructure atimberg@allstate. com Property of Allstate Insurance Company – Proprietary & Confidential
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