License Fees

general discussion
1

Did anyone in the forum had to pay license fees to migrate Business Objects 6.5 environment to Business Objects XI r3.1?

Initially we were migrating to XIr2 professional and there was no need for it per Business Objects. (4 cpu enterprise installation per license conversion). Now we want to move to XI r3 directly and save us from a converting to XI r2 and then to XI r3.

aamirmoh :us: (BOB member since 2006-07-31)

2

As far as I am aware, if you have your maintenance paid up to date, there is no cost.

plessiusa :netherlands: (BOB member since 2004-03-22)

3

Did you have to upgrade from 6.5 to XI r3?

I want to know if this is something you have read some place or is it information passed/shared with you by your Business Objects folks.

aamirmoh :us: (BOB member since 2006-07-31)

4

There is as far as I am aware, no reason why you can not upgrade directly to R3.
However you still need to do all the validation to make sure everything still works as you expect it.

For example, the current site that I am on is on XIR2 SP3.0 and we have an issue with Deski report written in version 5.9 where certain calculation simply just don’t work when the report is viewed in Infowiew. Look at the report in Full Client Deski and it works perfectly.

So just make sure that you do lots of testing.

plessiusa :netherlands: (BOB member since 2004-03-22)

5

Well, BusinessObjects did change their licensing model somewhat between older versions and XI. And some things that were included in older editions of BO seemed to be only available in the “Premium” license of BO XI.

Are they giving you a “license conversion” document showing your old products, the new ones, and maybe some new fees?

However, if you haven’t been paying your annual maintenance on your old BO, of course, yes, you will have to pay more money to get the newer version now.

dnewton :us: (BOB member since 2004-01-30)

6

I think you have hit the nail on the head. The licensing/product model changed in the 6.5 → XI from the point of view of that products were called and packaged. As such you may have to go through the license conversion process as outlined above before migration and the end result could be additional license costs. I remember having many multiple meetings with clients to explain this process and product mapping. I wont get into too much detail here as it can be very complicated and any concerns should be discussed with your account manager to ensure they fully explain the conversion and costs.

Sorry for not being too specific however being a public forum when it comes to licensing specifics, conversions, costs etc we can only be fairly generic. This is a little frustrating as I use to work in BO presales and understand your concerns :hb: The Business Objects Account Managers and Presales consultants should be taking the time to fully detail this process.

Cheers

Glenn

GlennL :australia: (BOB member since 2005-12-29)

7

we did get a license conversion document from 6.5 to xir2 with no additional costs, if we migrated. Then ,we requested another document from 6.5 to R3.1(skip r2 completely). What I heard from my account manager that there were costs involved to move from 6.5 to xi r3.1 professional but none when we moved to XIr2 professional.

We pay our maintenance/support fees and hence in my opinion there should be no reason for additional costs. (we just upgraded informatica with no cost). BO has been moving very slowly to come back with answers to our questions and hence I had to post my query.

Finally, did any of you had to pay to convert 6.5 to XIr3.1 professional?

What about Query as a web service? Isn’t that additional license cost to the professional edition?

aamirmoh :us: (BOB member since 2006-07-31)

8

  1. Well, we had no cost to go from 6.5 → XIr2, and then XIr2 → XIr3. So why you’d have it for 6.5 → XIr3, I don’t know.

  2. No, should not be additional, this comes with Professional.

The bottom line is, though: None of us here can really answer these questions reliably. It’s something you need to get your BO/SAP sales team to work through with you more clearly.

dnewton :us: (BOB member since 2004-01-30)

9

Exactly :).

There are no “fixed” pricing models, lets put it that way… :wink: .

Mak 1 :uk: (BOB member since 2005-01-06)

10

My current site converted from 5.1.9 to XIR2, we did have to pay a conversion cost. I don’t know the exact details but I understand it was to do with the fact that we were moving to an enterprise licencing model which was not available to XI.
This may be the reason that you have to pay the difference. The question is why weren’t they going to charge you to go R2. That could have been an over sight.

But like everybody has said in this post already, you need to check with your BO/SAP sales rep.

plessiusa :netherlands: (BOB member since 2004-03-22)

11

Hi All,
I have done a migration from BO 6.5 to BO XI 3.0

  1. To do a migration, you can directly migrate to XI 3.0 from 5.1.4 onwards. There are many advantages when you do migration to XI 3.0 (i.e. Free hand SQL report got concveretd in WebI, Security model is neared to BO 6.5 as if security model is not complex even u can migrate that as well etc.)
  2. As far as COST is concerned, my personal experience is BO is not offering this eervices along with support, this comes under Consulting services and they take this up a fixed time deliverable.
  3. Licensing model is Premium only now, and as you know no con-current licenses supported except you are a special cstomer of BO and they do consider you for concurrent licnesing

As per my experince, migration to XI 3.0 is far more better than XI R2, as XI R2 do have 4 SPs also while XI 3.0 inludes all this with variety of new features of XI 3.0 itself

Nirav
nniravv@gmail.com

nniravv :india: (BOB member since 2007-08-16)

12

The sales rep came back with no cost to convert to 3.1.
She said 4 cpu install in XIr2 could be carried over to XI 3.1(Professional Install).

Thank you everyone.

aamirmoh :us: (BOB member since 2006-07-31)