Explore strategies and best practices for designing a comprehensive disaster recovery (DR) architecture for your SAP landscape. Uncover what is unique about DR for SAP systems, and specifically unique to DR for SAP NetWeaver. Match the most important goals of any DR plan with 3 established, proven DR strategies: block-level replication, standby databases, and off-site backup storage. Understand how using virtualization in your SAP landscape affects DR. Find out how and why to integrate your DR solution with your complex SAP architecture from the start, as opposed to taking an application-agnostic approach of “just replicate and worry about details later.” Identify highly automated solutions that can reduce maintenance and manpower costs. Get tips for establishing specific DR goals for your SAP organization. View a live demo that shows alternative methods to the most common DR approaches.

Session presented by: Bernd Baier, Aivant L.P.

Gain a comprehensive understanding of the tools required to plan, prepare, and execute Java system copy and Java system refresh processes for dual ABAP and Java stack systems. Explore the differences between dual-stack and single-stack Java system copies. Learn how Java schemas are configured in the database and how the configuration tools affect not only the system refresh but also the system ID (SID) your Java stack system uses as a host. Walk through 3 Java system copy scenarios, and obtain advice to get through the process with a minimal number of steps and in a fraction of the time it might usually take. Understand the critical role the software deployment manager, part of the SAP NetWeaver development infrastructure, plays in the Java system copy, and where it has the largest impact. Assess the critical pre-processing and post-processing steps required for a successful Java system copy.

Session presented by: Sanjeev Gholap, BearingPoint

Find out how to improve SAP NetWeaver BI query, report, and dashboard performance using 20 technical tips and tricks devised by a seasoned expert. Explore best practices for modeling infocubes to meet performance goals. Pinpoint the best ways to cache result sets to improve memory utilization. Find out how to properly analyze and diagnose system performance issues that may occur at the database or application server level. Get expert advice on how to use aggregates and query debugging to speed your system’s response time. Examine the best ways to design multiproviders for stable, high-performing queries. Take away an example and learn how to analyze SAP EarlyWatch® reports within SAP Solution Manager to better identify the performance action items required for your SAP NetWeaver BI system.

Session presented by: Dr. Bjarne Berg, MyITgroup

Examine 30 critical lessons learned by seasoned project team members who have led or participated in a global SAP NetWeaver BI project. Obtain real-world recommendations to better organize your global teams, distribute project workloads, and keep your project scope under control. Examine the project plans from 3 recently completed SAP NetWeaver BI projects to see what made each successful and what pitfalls you should avoid. Explore common solution design flaws and technical development mistakes. Learn why and how to devote the proper time and resources to data integration and to setting local versus global reporting requirements. Find out how your peers handled difficult privacy concerns, security requirements, multiple currencies and languages, differing units of measure, regional reporting, and preferences.

Session presented by: Dr. Bjarne Berg, MyITgroup

This in-depth, 2-hour session provides comprehensive education on SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer. Explore its functionality and learn how it can be used for code-free development of dashboards, cockpits, and user interfaces and for optimizing the performance of the queries and data upon which they rely. Step through design principles and simple techniques to build a dashboard or cockpit. Examine 4 performance-tuning capabilities of SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer, learn how to activate them, and understand when (and when not) to use each. Find out how summary cubes with update rules can quickly deliver information summaries, such as total sales, total sales by store, or total sales by month, to your dashboard or cockpit. Understand how the jump-to-query feature allows you to drill down into each summary category to get more detailed information, right from the dashboard interface, without the need to run additional time-consuming reports. Come away understanding the role of SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer in an environment that includes SAP NetWeaver BI and solutions from SAP BusinessObjects.

Session presented by: Dr. Bjarne Berg, MyITgroup

Identify the skills, governance model, and resources required for setting up and running a COE for SAP NetWeaver BI and SAP NetWeaver Portal. Understand why a COE is needed and what it can do to improve the infrastructure, governance, development, and performance of SAP NetWeaver BI and SAP NetWeaver Portal. Discover how a COE can evolve from a simple model that services a small SAP NetWeaver BI or SAP NetWeaver Portal initiative to become a major COE — one that covers all aspects of data management and information provision as your use of SAP NetWeaver BI and SAP NetWeaver Portal technologies matures. Evaluate best (and worst) practices for implementing and managing a COE, and identify how your COE fits into your overall IT organization. Take home a framework model of the main elements of a COE.

Session presented by: Patrick Dixon, IBM

Learn how to migrate your existing SAP BW reporting infrastructure to SAP NetWeaver BI using a phased approach. Examine different front-end and back-end migration scenarios, high-level security migration, and what is required to roll out new reports and reporting tools to users. Explore the capabilities and requirements for using the new web analyzer tool, the report designer tool, and the administrator cockpit. Examine various approaches for testing your new reporting environment. Learn how to devise a change management strategy based on lessons learned from similar projects. Take home a “how-to” document that includes sample test cases and a project plan.

Session presented by: Vijay Reddy Gondesi, Intelligroup

Explore tips and techniques to ensure that your end users understand the requirements, content, purpose, and expected results of the SAP reports they use every day. Learn how to build reports based on end-user expectations so that you are better able to handle downstream questions, requests for enhancements, and misunderstandings about what features can and cannot do. Gather tips on identifying the differences between power users and super users, and learn how to get both groups involved with report requirements, blueprinting, and testing. Gain an understanding of how your SAP maintenance organization or center of excellence should be involved in your approach to ensure that user input and training is consistent and ongoing. Leave with an understanding of how you can leverage user input to improve the content and quality of your reports.

Session presented by: Anurag Barua, Ernst & Young

This session will help those administrators who already have an existing archiving strategy in place improve upon their initial efforts. Learn how to take on the challenge out of implementing archiving objects for SAP ERP. Capitalize on advanced analysis techniques to determine the appropriate archiving objects for tricky tables. Get practical advice to use advanced archiving prototyping, testing, and production scheduling techniques to ensure your project is on the right track. Explore technical dependencies that may not have been considered prior to archiving. Examine solutions for loading data from SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence and the Data Retention Tool (commonly known as DART) data after the data has already been archived. Determine what methods to use for advanced retrieval of problem archiving objects. Learn how new SAP NetWeaver Information Lifecycle Management functionality, including document imaging, storage, retrieval, retention management, expiration, and legal holds, fits into your overall archiving strategy.

Session presented by: Jim Malfetti, Brandywine Data Management Group

Obtain expert guidance to plan and derive maximum value from your upcoming SAP ERP upgrade. Get proven advice to assemble the right resources on your upgrade team, evaluate your current landscape using reverse business engineering, build a project plan and timeline, set expectations, and test and validate the upgrade. Understand the importance of including your SAP system, SAP NetWeaver, and J2EE administrators, as well as operating system and database administrators, functional personnel, and ABAP programmers on your team. Learn how to construct an SAP ERP upgrade testing plan that includes the right level of test runs and proof-of-concept activities. Walk through upgrade best practices and project plans. Take home sample tracking documents and upgrade project timelines.

Session presented by: Lee Johnson, Symmetry

Explore the impact that Unicode support for multiple languages may have on SAP system administration. Evaluate and learn to select the right Unicode conversion process for your company. Assess the requirements, benefits, and tradeoffs of combining a Unicode conversion project with another initiative such as an upgrade. Determine whether SAP tools, such as the distribution monitor and the SQL splitter, along with third-party tools, could accelerate your Unicode conversion project. Get valuable tips on how to estimate the downtime required for a conversion. Anticipate and learn how to overcome potential integration issues, such as how to use the appropriate language and code page setup to control the code page conversion in the exchange media. Examine the differences between single and multiple code page conversions, and find out what you must know to successfully complete each type.

Session presented by: Brad Dillingham, I18N Consulting

Obtain updates on SAP process chain functionality to automate and improve data load performance. Explore the newest process chain types and attributes delivered with SAP NetWeaver BI, including evaluation of process status, decision between multiple alternatives, and editing client. See how the “trigger event data change” attribute enables you to automatically recalculate and distribute a report whenever the infoprovider data is updated. Learn when you could boost SAP NetWeaver BI performance by using process chains to refresh database statistics, delete change logs, and manage indexes. Take home methods for debugging process chains and interrupting a running process chain. Also, take home a custom-developed program for scheduling process chains.

Session presented by: Jeevan Kumar Ravindran, TekLink International

This session offers expert instruction for using SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer to generate a variety of Web-based management reports, KPIs, and corporate and SAP system performance analysis. Learn when and why to use SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer instead of the Web application designer tool to create management cockpits. Learn how to easily integrate non-SAP data into your reports and analysis. See how single-page navigation allows users to drill deeper into details by simply selecting a single line of data. Step through a demo that shows how to use SAP NetWeaver BI statistical performance queries within a reporting application to provide an integrated view of SAP ERP and SAP NetWeaver BI system performance. Take home a checklist of critical steps for properly setting up and testing SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer.

Session presented by: Joerg Boeke, Syskoplan AG Germany

Learn how to use Crystal Reports from SAP BusinessObjects to properly design and deliver user-friendly, presentation-quality reports. Gain insight into how these reports can make it easier for users to consume and understand critical information and make better business decisions. Examine the formatting strengths and limitations of tools like SAP Business Explorer (SAP BEx), Crystal Reports, SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, and SAP BusinessObjects Voyager. View a step-by-step demo of how to use Crystal Reports to build a highly formatted report that includes groups, text objects, and sections. Take home a detailed guide on embedding forms into Crystal Reports and creating bar codes and mailing labels. Also take home useful formulas for sophisticated formatting.

Session presented by: Jenny Shah, Inforte, a Business & Decision Company

Learn how Heritage Propane implemented and uses SAP Solution Manager to provide support to a growing organization without increasing the number of IT support staff. Find out how the business case was built, what the timeline was for the project, the sequence in which SAP Solution Manager functionality was deployed, and how the project team was staffed and managed. Explore the scope of the implementation and how many resources were needed to deploy service desk, change request management (ChaRM) functions, and system monitoring. See how Heritage Propane is using ChaRM to reduce the manual effort for managing transports and how it has motivated and trained the business to adhere to ITIL standards. Learn how the company used SAP Solution Manager to establish accountability by increasing the visibility of actions.

Session presented by: Mark Wilson, Heritage Propane

Hear how Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc. (CAT® Logistics), consolidated its ABAP- and Java-based central services (ASCS/SCS) instances into a 4-node cluster to achieve 99.6% availability and a robust disaster recovery (DR) solution for its SAP system. Get lessons learned from the CAT Logistics team, including how to protect critical pieces of your SAP technical infrastructure that now could be single points of failure (SPOF). Find out how CAT Logistics used Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) stretch clusters and Oracle 10g Flashback Technology within its high-availability solution. Examine how the company configures production and non-production partitions on the same IBM pSeries server, and utilizes pSeries resource virtualization to shift resources as needed. Walk through a scenario that reveals how each infrastructure component reacts in the event of failure.

Session presented by: Milton Zhu, Caterpillar Logistic Services

Find out how CHEP develops custom applications using the component model, which defines the basic building blocks on which all SAP NetWeaver development infrastructure software development is based. Hear how CHEP has been able to use the component model to design reusable software components and development components. Explore CHEP’s best practices for structuring software components and defining dependencies between software components and development components. Step through visual examples of the 4 possible methods of defining development component dependencies — design time, build time, deploy time, and run time — along with CHEP’s criteria for when to use each. Explore CHEP’s best practices for promoting development component reusability.

Session presented by: Jayesh Prajapati, CHEP

Explore Microsoft’s methods of reducing the downtime associated with standard SAP administration tasks, such as applying patches, upgrading hardware and software, and changes to storage area networks. Examine the company’s high-availability practices at the Microsoft Windows operating system level, such as Microsoft Cluster Server and network load balancing, to reduce planned and unplanned downtime. Examine techniques used at the Microsoft SQL Server database level, such as log shipping. Find out how the company chose the best database mirroring option that offered the greatest benefits with the lowest impact to the SAP system. See how Microsoft utilizes SAP load balancing features, such as batch server groups. Assess the company’s minimized planned downtime procedures for a variety of everyday scenarios, including applying security patches at the OS level, upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server 2008, implementing a storage change for a database server, and moving servers.

Session presented by: Elke Bregler, Microsoft

Hear how Purolator Courier Ltd. implemented a business-focused solution to improve its ad hoc reporting and business requirements gathering in only 9 months. Learn how Purolator’s SAP NetWeaver BI team gained executive and business support for the program. Find out how the company designed a training program that resulted in immediate and effective user adoption. Gather firsthand tips to quantify the cost of time and resources, and see how this can help you manage the scope of your own SAP NetWeaver BI implementation. Learn how the company generated end-user and power-user support and enthusiasm by keeping the initial implementation simple while clearly communicating the pieces of new functionality that would be rolled out in subsequent phases. Gain insight into how Purolator is using SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator to reduce the need for aggregates and ensure the timeliness of complex, customized reports.

Session presented by: Carol Haynes, Purolator Courier

Examine how West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. (West) optimizes its SAP support organization with a unique strategy that differentiates between traditional SAP administration and SAP NetWeaver administration. Step through West’s experience of using a hybrid of in-house and outsourced support — often referred to as “rightsourcing” — to effectively find, utilize, and leverage the right resources to support its SAP environment. Find out how West examines its support options against 6 key factors — complexity, skill, time, cost, risk, and resources — to determine the best ways to boost its SAP system performance. Obtain a formula for improving system support productivity through documentation, communication, tools, review, training, and reorganization. Learn how to save time solving system performance problems by creating a technical FAQ database.

Session presented by: James Yen, West Pharmaceutical Services

Learn how Nebraska Public Power District built and distributed detailed dashboards, cockpits, and other analytic tools to arm key decision makers with up-to-date information. Explore the district’s initial 8-month pilot project. Examine the district’s unique approaches to collecting user requirements. Find out how the project team used stakeholder workshops to educate business users on what was involved with the project. Hear about new web development skills the team required to effectively use SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer. Assess data modeling approaches that improved the flexibility and efficiency of data acquisition, consolidation, and distribution. Gain insight into why the project team would limit the project scope of its next dashboard implementation to boost user excitement and adoption.

Session presented by: Phil Awtry, Nebraska Public Power District

Hear how Colgate-Palmolive Company used SAP NetWeaver MDM to create a central master data management (cMDM) application for its vendors. Learn how Colgate-Palmolive Company used a combination of technologies such as Web Dynpro for ABAP and object-oriented ABAP to create a scalable and reusable framework for creating and maintaining global master data. Gain insight into how the company used the latest version of the business rule framework, in conjunction with SAP Business Workflow, to separate business logic and application logic to simplify and reduce the amount of customization needed. Get tips on how the company built a modular cMDM prototype for testing. Learn how Colgate-Palmolive Company used the Web Dynpro floor plan manager tool to give the application a standard look and feel. Step through a demo of Colgate-Palmolive Company’s application in action.

Session presented by: Mark Szczerbaniewicz, Colgate-Palmolive Company

Hear how Johnson & Johnson created a vision for global data governance. Find out how the company is successfully executing its vision with the help of tools such as SAP NetWeaver MDM. Examine Johnson & Johnson’s proactive approach to ensuring clean data, as well as its formal process for managing data once SAP systems go live. See how delivering business-ready data prevents business process interruptions at Johnson & Johnson. Understand how the company leveraged a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach and established solid data validation and business rules to ensure high-quality data throughout the information life cycle. Explore examples of how Johnson & Johnson saved time and money and mitigated risks by minimizing manual data collection, validation, and documentation. Come away with new ideas to help you create your own lasting footprint for data governance.

Session presented by: David Woods, Johnson & Johnson

Hear Eastman Chemical outline its SAP NetWeaver Portal implementation vision, strategy, and roadmap. Explore the company’s approach to architecture, branding, customization, interoperability, roles, security, and tools. See how Eastman Chemical is now delivering SAP NetWeaver BI and other applications using a dual portal strategy. Hear why and how the company has activated new SAP NetWeaver Portal features, such as navigation zoom and quick links. See how the company architected the portal for intranet and extranet access. Explore lessons from Eastman Chemical’s efforts to achieve appropriate levels of branding, customization, and interoperability between its Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server and SAP NetWeaver Portal. Find out how Eastman Chemical continues to evolve its portal guidelines, standards, and best practices as its SAP NetWeaver Portal implementation journey unfolds.

Session presented by: Butch McNally, Eastman Chemical Company

Learn how to leverage the latest workbook design features available with SAP NetWeaver. Walk through demos of the new design features. Learn how to use formulas in the analyzer tool available with SAP Business Explorer (SAP BEx) to create formatted reports directly in Microsoft Excel. See how the latest drop-down filters and radio buttons simplify the end-user experience and boost acceptance and adoption. Get tips for building KPIs using flexible, formula-based reports using the new “convert to formula” feature. Learn how to create your own company workbook template. Take home a list of the 7 most important custom settings for workbooks, along with a list of macros that can be used to simplify the formatting and analysis of reports.

Session presented by: Joerg Boeke, Syskoplan AG Germany

Delve into multiple options available from SAP for extracting, transforming, and loading (ETL) data from multiple data sources into your SAP NetWeaver BI system. Obtain recommendations to fully leverage standard ETL content to minimize the amount of customization required. Determine to what extent you can connect external data sources to your BI system without the need for custom ABAP programming. Identify the checks that you should perform at various stages of ETL as data flows from source systems to targets in the BI environment. Understand why it is important to periodically transform data through the application of business rules to ensure its quality and integrity. Explore the best ways to migrate datasources from SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) 3.x to SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0. Evaluate ETL processes for rapid data acquisition and understand how it affects the data delivery and distribution strategy throughout your BI landscape.

Session presented by: Hari Srinivasan, Inforte, a Business & Decision Company

Explore the best ways to use the information broadcasting functionality delivered with SAP NetWeaver BI to pre-schedule the distribution of reports. Find out how to use characteristic values to determine the recipients of a particular report. Obtain recommendations for how to best leverage multi-channel broadcasting. Get a step-by-step method to design a customer user interface that automates mass broadcasts to multiple departments, plants, or other large groups — without the need to manually launch the distribution every day, week, or month. Examine the benefits and tradeoffs of time-point-based broadcasting, process chain-based broadcasting, and broadcast synchronization with data loads. Pinpoint the relevant security objects that can be used to grant the right level of user access to reports. Gain insight into how to broadcast SAP NetWeaver BI reports directly to a Microsoft Windows® back-end system.

Session presented by: Jeevan Kumar Ravindran, TekLink International

Learn how to use an SAP NetWeaver BI virtual provider to keep your reports up to date with real-time data. Understand key differences between a virtual provider and an info-provider. Examine the steps necessary to configure a virtual provider, including the data transfer process, data transformation, infosource creation, and virtual provider creation. Learn how virtual providers can be used to incorporate third-party source system data into reports. Step through detailed examples that show you how to use virtual providers in conjunction with SAP BEx to infuse real-time data from SAP ERP and other SAP applications into an SAP NetWeaver BI report.

Session presented by: Matthew Repoli, CMR Services

Explore the tools, decisions, and activities that drive better presentation and performance of your portal-facing reports and analytics. Know your options for incorporating different user interfaces, including the classic SAP user interface, into the portal, as well as those that can be built using business server pages, Web Dynpro, or SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer. Explore the pros and cons of each option in terms of flexibility, graphics, and color choices. Explore Knowledge Management functionality that enable portal users to include unstructured data, including static reports, documents, and project plans, in their analyses. Hear how other customers are using new high-performance analytics to boost portal performance.

Session presented by: Patrick Dixon, IBM

Explore the ins and outs of configuring user security in the dual environment (ABAP and Java) of SAP NetWeaver Application Server. Learn how to add custom user authorizations in the Java-based visual administrator tool (also referred to as the Java VA) and the SAP NetWeaver Administrator. View a demo of how to use SU01/PFCG and the user management engine (UME) to create a custom role with Java authorizations. Walk through the steps of creating an ABAP user and role and assigning it customized Java authorizations. Learn how the UME, Java VA, and ABAP security transactions work together to manage Java authorizations. Locate and overcome the biggest risks in default user security. Examine how to trace and fix problems such as the Java connection between the UME and ABAP user security. Get detailed instruction on how to use security logs in the Java engine to pinpoint authorization errors that may not show up in ABAP transactions.

Session presented by: Dan King, Capgemini

Gain an understanding of SAP Enterprise Architecture Framework for SOA, which is delivered with SAP Solution Manager and modeled on The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF). Learn how it can be used to develop applications for SOA that support business processes across multiple systems. See how to jointly leverage SAP Enterprise Architecture Framework and SAP Solution Manager to build your SOA incrementally. Identify templates you can start using immediately to achieve the correct level of abstraction and reusability in your developed services. See how to increase reusability of services developed by multiple vendors with SAP’s soon-to-be-released partner-delivered enterprise services certification, and understand how that offering will be relevant to your architecture.

Session presented by: Dan King, Capgemini

See how to use 3 SAP Solution Manager tools to centrally monitor SAP systems and manage SAP administrative tasks. Understand how and when to leverage central system monitoring, service desk, and central system administration to gain greater visibility into your systems, resources, and daily operations. Learn how to use central system monitoring to activate standard and custom monitor sets to check the performance of your system resources, users, and background jobs. Get details on how to set up alerts from a central location. Learn how to configure service desk to support error resolution during unit testing, integration testing, and post-go-live support. Step through examples of how to tailor these SAP Solution Manager tools for your own needs. Take home a configuration guide for central system monitoring.

Session presented by: Yosh Eisbart, COMSYS IT Partners

Infuse greater flexibility into your reporting processes by using SAP NetWeaver BI exception aggregation functionality to change the way your query result lines are aggregated. Review configuration tips to incorporate this feature into your queries, giving end users the ability to easily manipulate their results lines. Understand how to configure calculated key figures, restricted key figures, and formulas at varying levels of characteristic and navigational attribute aggregation. See firsthand how to easily integrate exception aggregation into your current reporting process by viewing a simple query with aggregated totals, averages, counts, minimums, maximums, and first and last values. Learn how to nest key figures at multiple characteristic levels and provide varying aggregation to the end user. Take home a document that defines detailed steps required to configure any key figure using exception aggregation.

Session presented by: Matthew Repoli, CMR Services

Find out how to effectively utilize SAP Solution Manager to monitor a diverse SAP landscape that includes SAP ERP and SAP NetWeaver. See how the new work center in SAP Solution Manager can be used as a single point of monitoring multiple systems through a user-friendly interface. Acquire tips and tricks to configure SAP Solution Manager alert monitoring and system availability monitoring features to help define central auto-reactions and send alerts to email accounts and pagers for both ABAP and Java applications. Learn how to set up and use CCMS alert monitoring, file system monitoring, Oracle alert monitoring, and performance monitoring. Examine different ways to monitor the SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (SAP NetWeaver PI) environment. See how to integrate SAP Solution Manager with SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (SAP NetWeaver BI) to develop customized web-based system performance reports for IT support teams.

Session presented by: Sanjeev Gholap, BearingPoint

This session shows you the best ways to utilize SAP NetWeaver BI statistics to pinpoint the causes of query performance problems. Receive step-by-step instruction to properly install SAP NetWeaver BI statistics, a frequently overlooked yet invaluable piece of functionality. See how you can use statistics to unearth valuable information that could help you answer:

• How frequently is this particular query run?
• What 25 queries are we executing most frequently each month?
• Which infoproviders are consumed the most?

Learn how to identify and correct the most common query performance bottlenecks by employing cache, adjusting data models, using SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator, and making the most of multiproviders. Understand how to customize statistics to meet the unique needs of your environment.

Session presented by: Jeevan Kumar Ravindran, TekLink International           

Evaluate your options for modeling time-dependent relationships in SAP NetWeaver BI and SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation, and determine which of these applications will best suit your needs. Compare each application’s data structures and formats for modeling time-dependent relationships. Obtain best practices for integrating and leveraging time-dependent data. Step through 4 time-dependent business scenarios, such as joining time-dependent infoobjects when modeling transitive attributes. Determine if and when you should use ABAP code to model advanced time-dependent relationship scenarios or organizational structures.

Session presented by: Jens Koerner, Inforte, a Business & Decision Company

This session helps you prepare yourself, your team, and your environment for the day your consultants, and their expertise, walk out the door. Get guidelines to help you determine if you require a consultant and how to find the right firm to suit your project’s needs. Learn how to get more out of your consultant investment by adding specific language to your contracts that provides for knowledge transfer and documentation. Collect tips to ensure that these promises are met. Get 5 tips on how to best manage your consultant to meet your objectives and get the most for your consulting dollars. Find out how best to utilize a consultant as a mentor instead of as a contractor. Learn how to structure ongoing relationships with consulting organizations that can provide you with ad hoc support after project completion.

Session presented by: Frank Powell, Symmetry

Evaluate new tools to enable users to design their own queries and reports on SAP and non-SAP data. Learn how to jointly leverage your existing SAP NetWeaver BI infocubes and queries with front-end tools from SAP BusinessObjects. Determine if and when it makes sense to rebuild any existing queries before using SAP BusinessObjects tools. Gain a comprehensive understanding of how SAP BusinessObjects universes work and how they translate data from your SAP and non-SAP systems within infocubes and SAP BEx queries. Step through an example of how to run an SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence query against SAP NetWeaver BI or third-party data that has been brought into a universe.

Session presented by: Jenny Shah, Inforte, a Business & Decision Company

In this 3-hour session, develop a working knowledge of the key SAP NetWeaver Portal functionality and important tools for administering SAP NetWeaver Portal — SAP NetWeaver Administrator and SAP Solution Manager. Assess updates to SAP NetWeaver Portal security model and tools. Examine your options for integrating SAP NetWeaver BI and SAP BusinessObjects reports and analytics into the portal. Weigh the benefits and risks of using federated portal network functionality to share content between portals. Obtain recommendations to leverage the web page composer tool to create highly sophisticated corporate branding for your portal. See how SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer complements and integrates with SAP NetWeaver Portal to provide a user-friendly development environment to business users. Learn how SAP NetWeaver Business Client can be used for hosting different content types within the portal, such as HTML web content, Web Dynpro content, and graphical user interface (GUI) content from SAP. Come away with the confidence you need to fully leverage SAP NetWeaver Portal functionality and achieve greater return on your portal investment.

Session presented by: Patrick Dixon, IBM

Learn what to expect when planning and executing an upgrade to your current SAP NetWeaver BI system. Understand which new functionality and which key system and infrastructure requirements will now have the greatest impact on your technical resources, budgets, and end users. Gather tips to properly determine hardware needs and sizing requirements. Review the most important factors in planning your upgrade, including Unicode conversion, database size implications, and the potential impact on memory and performance. Find out how to leverage newer SAP NetWeaver BI features, information broadcasting functionality, and Java. Examine lessons learned and key project success factors from 5 customers who completed well-executed upgrades. Walk away with best practices, recommended upgrade paths, and support strategies.

Session presented by: Dr. Bjarne Berg, MyITgroup

Prepare for the change management challenges that can occur in SAP environments that run Java. Identify the best ways to automatically synchronize ABAP and Java changes. Discover how managing Java-based changes differs from ABAP-based changes. (Hint: Java-based change procedures are not uniform across the various Java development workbench environments.) Step through demos of and acquire advice for deploying the new tools and procedures for managing Java-based changes, such as the enhanced change and transport system (commonly known as CTS+), the transport organizer web UI, and the deploy web service clients. Gain time-saving strategies for selecting which tools and procedures will, and won’t, work in your environment.

Session presented by: Thomas Fritsch, REALTECH

Step through practical examples of how SAP customers are using SAP Solution Manager change request management (commonly known as ChaRM) functionality to stay on top of the abundance of changes that occur during implementation, upgrade, maintenance, and compliance projects. Explore new technical requirements for setting up ChaRM for ABAP and Java stacks, using the enhanced change and transport system. Find out how to include non-SAP components in your change management activities, and integrate ChaRM with the SAP Solution Manager service desk features. Find out how to provide comprehensive change and traceability information to your auditors and compliance teams. Consider tracking techniques, strategies, and reports that work well for SAP implementation projects, maintenance projects, and urgent corrections. Gain insight into how ChaRM fits into the new Run SAP methodology for continuous improvement, operations optimization, and end-to-end standards.

Session presented by: Ajay Vonkarey, Alpha Sirius

Explore the top 10 SAP Solution Manager tools and templates, such as the usage guide and the test workbench, that can accelerate your technical upgrade and save you time and money. See firsthand how SAP Solution Manager provides you with a consistent upgrade methodology and delivers regular updates to your ongoing plan via the SAP upgrade road map. Find out how to use this information to prioritize your resources and efforts. Take a close look at the tools that can aid in your upgrade documentation and processes, such as the reverse business engineering tool and the solution documentation assistant. See how the business process repository can help you identify process changes that may occur as part of the upgrade. See how to use SAP Solution Manager to perform regression testing, delta testing, and delta training.

Session presented by: Lori Sanders, Enowa

Understand the complete set of options now available from SAP and SAP BusinessObjects for report formatting and printing, Web reporting, report customization, drill-down analytics, planning, consolidations, dashboards, and performance management. Examine the maintenance strategies for SAP NetWeaver BI and understand which capabilities will be replaced with SAP BusinessObjects functionality. See how your existing SAP NetWeaver BI data models, queries, and reports can be preserved when adopting new applications from SAP BusinessObjects. Take home a detailed matrix illustrating which tools and capabilities address specific tasks and challenges along with a comprehensive glossary of new SAP and SAP BusinessObjects terminology. 

Session presented by: David Dixon, Inforte, a Business & Decision Company

Hear lessons from real-world projects to help you plan, prepare for, and derive maximum value from your upcoming implementation of SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation. Walk step-by-step through an implementation life cycle, and get proven advice to properly design and configure SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation. Learn to avoid common pitfalls, such as underestimating the time needed for the data quality and validation phases. Find out why enlisting user feedback on user input screens, reports, and system documentation is key to bolstering user adoption. Identify unique reporting properties, such as the ability to change user perspectives. Learn how to clearly define your testing strategy to ensure healthy system performance. Draw valuable lessons from recent implementations that will help you address key issues, such as data validation, currency translation, and proper system and process design.

Session presented by: Jens Koerner, Inforte, a Business & Decision Company

Examine the contractual requirements required to take advantage of SAP Enterprise Support, the newest support services offering from SAP. Examine what SAP Enterprise Support offers in terms of continuous quality checks and remote services for technical risk assessment. Get steps to set up and use SAP Solution Manager, enterprise edition, which is the foundation for all services delivered with SAP Enterprise Support. Learn how to connect SAP Solution Manager to the SAP global support backbone to enable remote support of your system. Get technical and functional best practices for using SAP Solution Manager to document critical business processes, solutions, and projects, allowing you to assess their impact on your system. Find out how to submit priority 1 and priority 2 customer messages from SAP Solution Manager to SAP for resolution and financial reimbursement.

Session presented by: Lori Sanders, Enowa

Get expert guidance on setting an enterprise-wide business intelligence (BI) strategy. Learn how to get the right information — not just data — to the right people, in the right format, at the right time. Find out what key decisions you should make at the outset of building your BI strategy, such as establishing the scope and breadth of your data model and supporting requirements. Get tips on how to break down overwhelming requirements into manageable groupings. Learn how to map IT requirements to ensure proper solution design and strong user adoption. Step through examples of other companies’ BI decisions, such as moving from siloed, data mart solutions to enterprise relevant solutions. Take home a checklist of questions, roles, sample process documents, and specification templates to get started on building or revising your BI strategy.

Session presented by: Penny Silvia, MyITgroup

Find out how to turn SAP NetWeaver PI runtime components and services into actual working functionality and code. Learn to match resources like the integration engine, Enterprise Services Repository (ES Repository), and integration directory with the modeling, monitoring, or integration services they help support. Understand how the XML message broker and business process engine enable a variety of process integration services. Follow a message as it flows through the various components of SAP NetWeaver PI, from its system of origin to its ultimate destination. Learn to use key message monitors and other troubleshooting tools to analyze issues that can occur when integrating data with SAP NetWeaver Portal, SAP ERP, and other applications.

Session presented by: Dan King, Capgemini

Gather expert, undocumented tips and techniques to leverage the adapter framework in SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (SAP NetWeaver PI) to achieve robust, secure connectivity in internal and business-to-business integration. Delve into how to solve common message delivery problems, such as incomplete or missing file transfers. Learn specific tips for improving the reliability of interfaces that use the most common protocols, including the default RFC adapter setting, which can stop SAP NetWeaver PI from connecting to your SAP ERP system. Learn how to configure the following adapters and design sender interfaces to prevent lost messages: FTP/file transfers, web services, direct database access (JDBC), and RFC/BAPI. Get tips on how to prevent lost messages by simulating connection errors you can’t test for with standard SAP functionality. Walk away with a better understanding of how to best use the adapter framework in SAP NetWeaver PI.

Session presented by: Dan King, Capgemini

When budgets are tight, how do you complete your SAP upgrade with as few incremental dollars as possible? Get a technical perspective on cost-effective ways to avoid rework and eliminate expensive errors by identifying prerequisites ahead of time and testing them in a pilot upgrade. Get instructions on how to define a solid upgrade procedure document to streamline the process. Gather tips and tricks to reduce costly time delays and overruns — the biggest reasons that projects exceed their budgets. Find out how to minimize costs by using part-time or fixed-rate project consultants. Identify new standard SAP functionality that replaces expensive custom programs, custom interfaces, or third-party products. Evaluate whether it makes sense to combine other SAP projects with an upgrade. Bring dozens of ideas back to your office that you and your team can use to reduce the costs of your next upgrade.

Session presented by: Frank Powell, Symmetry

Get expert advice and practical tips to successfully cut over SAP NetWeaver Portal from a development environment to a live portal. Explore all aspects of cutover planning and execution, including cutover processes, roles, and responsibilities of the project team. Find out how to handle unexpected surprises using techniques such as escalation management, a SWAT team approach, and defect triage. Get tips for building a cutover strategy and a step-by-step plan that accounts for risks and dependencies, such as licensing and integration testing. Take an in-depth look at the roles and expertise needed during a portal cutover, from the cutover champion to the business unit champion, and know how to closely coordinate the project team, IT department, and business units. Understand how to build and execute a cutover that results in a smooth transition to a portal that is well received by end users. Take home a valuable portal cutover plan checklist and template to use in your own project.

Session presented by: Mukul Nagle, Deloitte Consulting

Get step-by-step instruction for rendering SAP NetWeaver BI reports and analytics in your portal. Examine the back-end hooks delivered with SAP NetWeaver Portal that enable the display of these reports. Learn which portal-facing reports should be created using SAP NetWeaver BI and which would be better addressed using SAP ERP. Learn how to cull the number of reports you display to a manageable number, and gain insight into how this could reduce development costs while still providing users with the information they need. Find out how SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer can be used for rapid development of reporting scenarios that pull data from both SAP NetWeaver BI and SAP ERP into a single report that can be displayed in your portal.

Session presented by: Patrick Dixon, IBM

Learn how leading SAP customers are using IBM solutions to derive greater value from the information in their SAP NetWeaver BW systems. Learn new ways to better utilize SAP NetWeaver BW data to promote timely, fact-based decision making. Hear how IBM solutions can enable IT to put information in the hands of the business users to satisfy the wide range of urgent information demands while extending their SAP NetWeaver BW skills, knowledge, and expertise to reduce data backlogs.

Session presented by: Karen Kirby, IBM

Find out what the new and enhanced features in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 mean to SAP administrators. Understand how several new key features, such as database compression and backup compression functionalities, can be enabled transparently in SAP NetWeaver 7.0 to save substantial disk or tape space. Learn how new security features, like Transparent Data Encryption and All Actions Audited, work transparently with existing and new SAP solutions. See specific examples of the new features that will help you audit all non-SAP system access to tables. Discover how Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Row Level compression can reduce a 6.5 terabyte database by more than 20%, and what “gotchas” are associated with this process. Learn the right way to utilize new performance features such as Query Plan Freezing to improve and stabilize query performance and predictability.

Session presented by: Juergen Thomas, Microsoft Corporation

This session is jam-packed with advice to help you assess and manage the impact that the implementation of solutions from SAP BusinessObjects will have on administrators’ infrastructure strategies and daily maintenance routines. Get detailed information on SAP BusinessObjects solution scalability. Examine criteria to determine how many servers are needed for optimum performance of these applications. Find out to what degree SAP and SAP BusinessObjects security applications can be integrated. Obtain best practices to govern the environment with SAP BusinessObjects Metadata Management and usage statistics. Get a list of which components from SAP BusinessObjects integration software for SAP solutions are needed for quick-start implementations. Get a holistic overview of how SAP BusinessObjects solutions, such as SAP BusinessObjects Data Services and SAP BusinessObjects Metadata Management integrate into your SAP landscape.

Session presented by: David Dixon, Inforte, a Business & Decision Company