SAP Business Objects Consultant

Business Objects Consultant

* This is a remote position - local to Raleigh, NC only please

* This is a 4-month contract position

Business Objects and Crystal Reports are used across the enterprise for reporting and are integrated with several web-based and legacy applications. The current environment runs Business Objects 4.2 and Crystal Reports 2016. Business Objects 4.2 is no longer supported, creating operational, security, compatibility, and maintainability risks. This engagement requires strong Business Objects platform experience, Windows Server expertise, and demonstrated success modernizing systems that contain legacy reports, applications, integrations, and dependencies.

The contractor will be expected to perform the following activities.

• Inventory the existing Business Objects 4.2 and Crystal Reports 2016 environment, including servers, services, repositories, databases, applications, reports, universes, user accounts, security groups, schedules, publications, and integrations.
• Review current patch levels, licensing, configuration, system architecture, and supporting infrastructure.
• Identify connections to databases, file systems, email services, Active Directory, web servers, and other enterprise systems.
• Identify web-based and legacy applications that embed, invoke, schedule, distribute, or otherwise depend on Business Objects or Crystal Reports.
• Document unsupported components, compatibility concerns, technical debt, and migration risks.
• Evaluate the proposed phased migration path and determine whether additional intermediate steps or remediation activities are required.
• Establish a baseline of existing reports, schedules, security settings, integrations, and system performance.

• Validate the technical feasibility and vendor supportability of the tentative migration path:
  • Business Objects 4.2 to Business Objects 4.3.
  • Continued use of Crystal Reports 2016 during the initial Business Objects 4.3 phase.
  • Migration from Crystal Reports 2016 to Crystal Reports 2020.
  • Upgrade from Business Objects 4.3 to Business Objects 2025.
  • Migration of the platform and supporting components to Windows Server 2022.
• Recommend adjustments to the sequence based on supported upgrade paths, compatibility requirements, system dependencies, and risk.
• Confirm compatibility among the proposed Business Objects releases, Crystal Reports versions, Windows Server 2022, databases, browsers, authentication services, application servers, reporting clients, and third-party components.
• Determine whether each phase should use an in-place upgrade, side-by-side migration, content migration, or another supported approach.
• Develop a detailed phased migration plan that minimizes operational disruption and provides a reliable rollback strategy for each phase.
• Define requirements for development, test, quality-assurance, disaster-recovery, and production environments, as applicable.
• Develop a plan for migrating Business Objects repositories, universes, reports, security settings, schedules, publications, and application integrations.
• Identify reports, integrations, drivers, runtime components, or custom code that must be remediated, converted, rebuilt, replaced, or retired.
• Provide effort estimates, dependencies, assumptions, risks, decision points, and a proposed implementation schedule for each migration phase.

• Install and configure the approved Business Objects 4.3 release and required supporting components.
• Apply required service packs, patches, and security updates.
• Configure the Central Management Server, File Repository Servers, processing servers, web and application components, auditing, monitoring, and other required…