BusinessObjects XI R2 Unix Vs. Windows

[ajitapte]

We are a mediumsized BO classic shop and are in the process of planning an upgrade, we have prototyped our install on windows with SSO. We have BOE ( includes Perfomrance Management) have built some dashboards as well. In future we do see requirements coming up for querying cubes MSOLAP mostly and also requirements for MS office integration.

One of the main quetsions we are facing is which platform to go for Unix or Windows.

We want to ensure that the Total Cost of Ownership is low. If we go Unix route we will get stronger boxes and hence single processor can handle more users as compared to a typical wintel box. However it seems that unix install could be bit more complex. In addition is BO more stable on Windows as compared to UNIX ??


If anyone has any thoughts on the aboev please share.

Thanks Much.
Regards
Ajiit

 

[satinsilhouette]

UNIX has always been a stronger platform. But BOBJ has always been geared more towards Windows. It seems that installs on UNIX take longer and there are a lot of hoops you have to jump through to get to a finished environment.

The OLAP is basically mostly based off of the underlaying data warehouse, which I hope is Oracle or Teradata. So the OLAP functionality like Universes gets pushed down to the DW.

I have not done SSO on anything but a Windows env so I don't have thoughts there.

The only other thing I can think of to mention is, if you use BOXIE then use Java, isn't UNIX better at it?

UNIX, if you can handle the extra time for the install, go for it. Otherwise Windows can handle it just fine.

Thanks so much!
satinsilhouette

 

[ajitapte]

Thanks much for replying. Additional points that I wanted to mention we will beb going on XIR2 , we will also need Microsoft Office Integration. The OLAP piece what I mention is on MS Analysis services.

Thanks,
Ajit

 

[skrandel]

Good luck having a UNIX box talk to Microsoft. There are some ODBC drivers. They used to be VERY expensive, but now there are some open source ones.

However, they all have limitations.

Steve Krandel
Symantec