XI 3.1 Supported Platforms

I’ve been digging around the various SAP and Business Objects support websites trying to find a hardware requirement document for Business Objects XI 3.1

This is not as simple as it may first appear.

I did eventually find the correct URL:

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/businessobjects-articles?rid=/webcontent/uuid/3042e25c-a668-2b10-7fa7-a9d373687040

If you are looking for PARs and Platform Guides for other BOBJ products, use this link:
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/businessobjects-articles

For general Product Guides, use the following link:
http://help.sap.com/content/bobj/overview/index.htm

Having read the documents it is good to see that our development server far exceeds the minimum hardware requirement. It is worth noting that if you are upgrading from XIR2 toXI3.1, a faster CPU is required – a minimum of P4 2Ghx is recommended for XI 3+. RAM requirements remain the same at 2Gb. Hard disk issues aren’t really an issue nowadays.

I’ll be looking at installing XI 3.1 on our development server over the next few days and will post an update.

Business Objects Support woes

We’ve recently been trying to help out a number of our clients who are having problems with Business Objects technical support.

This has been caused by problems in migrating Business Objects support to SAP. As you may be aware, Business Objects migrated all their support to the SAP system in early July. This does not appear to have been a smooth process by any stretch of the imagination. Users have reported problems with gaining access to support, lost cases, etc.

Such is the fury of users, that a post in the excellent Business Objects forum now runs to 9 pages! PC World has picked up on this and has posted an article on the topic. Several other magazines have picked up on this story. However, it appears to have been a syndicated story as they all reprint the same article.

So what can you do during this transition period? Well, three main things.

First, if you have an urgent support case, escalate it to your account manager. He or she will have access to the support team and can direct your query to the correct person.

Second, if you use a Business Objects partner or third party consultancy, call upon their expertise to solve your particular issue.

Third, make use of the excellent Business Objects community forum. This is simply one of the best forums available on the internet. This is independent from Business Objects and SAP, and works on a volunteer basis. More often than not, you will find answers to your questions here. If you have a question which has never been asked before, post it. It’s free. You’ll find that the community will try to help you with an answer before long.

While this appears to be a real problem which will take time to sort out, once migrated, you should find the SAP support site a whole lot better than the old Business Objects site.