NOAD EQM vs.

BusinessObjects Life Cycle Manager

Product Comparison Matrix

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Life Cycle Management for Business Objects XI

Life cycle management typically refers to the management of each phase of a product's life creation, modification, and ultimately retirement. Business Objects claims a similar approach to your information management life cycle with Life Cycle Manager. Instead they offer a plug-in which interfaces with their Business Objects XI 3.1 platform and closely mirrors typical Business Objects environments (Development, Testing and Production). Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 compliance states that change control procedures should cover all aspects of the change cycle, including initiation, monitoring, testing, and approval, as well as migration of the appropriately approved change into the production environment. This process also must be appropriately secured so that personnel in this function cannot, without detection, make inappropriate changes to the program or the related data. The change process must be comprehensive in nature, considering all possible implications of the changes, such as system interfaces, data and error-checking routines, application security changes, management reporting, etc.* As a Technology Partner of Business Objects for the past decade, NOAD is recognized as the leader in life cycle management for BusinessObjects. As such, we've analyzed the functionality of Business Objects' Life Cycle Manager plug-in. Our results have concluded that Business Objects' Life Cycle Manager is useful as an enhancement on their import wizard, but highly deficient in providing adequate information quality assurances that competitive enterprises demand in today's world of compliance and regulations. Business Objects' Life Cycle Manager does not offer the level of Change Management, Deployment Automation, User Activity Monitoring, and Compliance Management needed to manage change within today's complex BI deployments. That's why high-performing enterprises, like JP Morgan Chase, GE, Universal Music Group, and the US Air force keep turning to NOAD EQM for the ultimate in change, quality and compliance management.

*Guide to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Managing Application Risks and Controls by Protivity - Independent Risk Consulting

This comparison document clearly shows that Business Objects' Life Cycle Manager is a free plug-in and not an adequate life cycle management solution for today's complex BI environments.

Be Version Ensured
How can you make sure you are managing the correct version of your objects within your BusinessObjects environment? What changes have been made? Which version has been deployed to the applicable environments? Stringent version control of objects is a "must-have" for enterprise-level life cycle management, because it ensures your "single version of the truth". Version accuracy and accountability must be enforced and automatic for any life cycle management system to claim it is "enterprise-level". Business Objects claims Life Cycle Manager allows you to manage different versions of BI resources, but the truth is that Version Control is not even an integrated part of the Business Objects solution. In fact, Business Objects Life Cycle Manager uses a free open-source version control system called Subversion. This means that Version Control with Life Cycle Manager is NOT AUTOMATED and, more importantly NOT ENFORCED - in fact it is a manual process which can easily be circumvented. With Life Cycle Manager, users can deploy items to the next or even an environment without storing them in the Version Management System. This means you cannot be sure that the version of an item in your production environment is stored in your Version Management system. This creates gaps in your life cycle audit trail and can compromise compliance. With Business Objects, life cycle management starts in the deployment process, and it is not integrated in the development process. Regulations describe that true life cycle management begins with the creation and development of an item. NOAD EQM enforces version

control by including it from the beginning the development cycle. With NOAD EQM developers are required to check-in an item before deploying it to development, and the process is simple and completely automated. This guarantees all changes are correctly versioned and stored within NOAD EQM, provides a complete audit trail, and ensures full compliance.

Be tested and approved

Promoting items across different environments is easily done with Life Cycle Manager, but Life Cycle Manager does NOT guarantee the item has been tested and/or approved nor are you informed on specific details on who, when, what and why. NOAD EQM enforces and ensures promotion of approved items in a controlled manner as an essential part of life cycle management, because promoting untested or unapproved items can yield catastrophic results, loss of revenues, and compromise compliance. That's why NOAD EQM includes a testing and approval layer with customizable workflows that enforce users to complete required procedures before an item can be promoted to the next environment. NOAD EQM monitors each step, providing a complete audit trail to provide complete accountability and compliance, resulting in confidence and control.

Be Compliant
Enforced, accountable and reliable procedures are the only way to ensure compliance. NOAD EQM eliminates error-causing manual processes by automating and monitoring all activity. This ensures all required processes are executed in complete compliance and according to predefined procedures. Considering local and federal laws, Compliance Management is a must in today's business environment. Even small errors can compromise compliance, which typically results in costly legal complications or worse. BusinessObjects' Life Cycle Manager's processes include several voluntary manual steps, many of which could easily compromise compliance and accountability. If you cannot provide a complete audit trail of every item within your LCM you are NOT compliant!

Be in Control
NOAD EQM focuses on complete Enterprise Platform Management ensuring clarity and control to the entire platform. BusinessObjects Life Cycle Manager only focuses on promoting items between environments. The result only NOAD EQM gives you complete "cradle to grave" control of your life cycle management.

The following pages provide an overview of the differences between the two solutions, helping you to choose the right solution for you.

Comparison Matrix

Change Management Functionality

Provide integrated version control Provide version control on generic items (e.g Word, Excel, SQL scripts, etc) Provide Secured Check-in/out Manage Project independent of CMS structure Integrated deployment from Version Control

Business Objects Life Cycle Manger

NOAD EQM

NO NO NO NO NO NO YES

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

Develop docs on static production universe version while others are changing the universe Mechanism to quickly load large numbers of documents

Deployment Control Functionality

Separated Environments transparent to BO repositories Separated Environments in one BO CMS Transfer non Business Objects items Transfer to non Business Objects repositories Customizable workflows per environment Ensure only approved items are transferred Enforce usage of deployment procedure Deployment paths eliminating wrong transfers Synchronize /Rebuild BO repository Transfer to multiple environments in one action Set/Change secured connection during transfer Wizard based Transfer Multi Level secured roll-back Allow different structures (folders, connections, categories, etc) across CMSes

Business Objects Life Cycle Manger

NOAD EQM

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO YES YES YES YES NO NO

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

Analysis
Deliver detailed Universe difference analysis on all possible differences (objects, conditions, joins, contexts etc.) Deliver detailed Document difference report Delivers Cascaded Object impact analysis Delivers Health Check analysis Delivers relation analysis report between universes and reports Delivers end-to-end audit trail Instant relationship between documents and universes

Business Objects Life Cycle Manger

NOAD EQM

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
Business Objects Life Cycle Manger

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

Detailed audit reports to help you increase the quality of universes and documents Provide instant insight on deployed versions

Security
Segregation of duties Security layer with authorization per Development Acceptance or Production Environment Role based security Integrates with Business Objects Security

NOAD EQM

NO NO NO NO YES
Business Objects Life Cycle Manger

YES YES YES YES YES

Compliance Management
Change history reports Full end-to-end audit report Auditability of whole environment from single user interface

NOAD EQM

NO NO NO

YES YES YES

Architecture
Integrated solution (all functions in one product) Fully integrated with BO repositories

Business Objects Life Cycle Manger

NOAD EQM

NO YES YES NO YES YES YES NO NO NO NO

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

Update to Business Objects repository are performed through BO approved technology Supports Business Objects XIR2 Supports Business Objects XIR3 Supports Business Objects CMS on UNIX Product supports multiple repositories in different geographical locations All tasks managed from a centralized installation Product enables users to transfer Documents and Universes into a production environment without having physical access to any production machine No access to Business Objects Repository required through development tools (like Designer or Deski) to promote or manage universes and reports The product always gives you a clear overview of what's inside each repository

About NOAD
Founded in 2000, NOAD is the leading provider of quality assurance solutions that empower enterprises to manage business Intelligence (BI) secured, guaranteed and effective. With more than 200 customers in over 19 countries and across all industry sectors we have established a blue-chip, worldwide customer base including JP Morgan Chase, GE, Universal Music Group, the US Air force and more. NOAD has dual headquarters in the Netherlands and New York, and works with more than 30 worldwide partners and resellers with over 100 certified field-support professionals.

Our Offering
Based on our beliefs that in today's world having accurate and controlled BI systems is a "must have", not a "nice to have", we have developed EQM, a unique software solution designed to help organizations effectively monitor, maintain and manage the accuracy and integrity of their BI systems.

Our Beliefs
While Business Intelligence is being commoditized, information management is under greater scrutiny within organizations of all sizes, therefore the need to systematically evaluate and enforce IT policy has become a fact of life. Increased capabilities and adoption of Business Intelligence creates more use, more change and more chaos. Now, more than ever, change control has become fundamental to IT control. Without strong change controls on Business Intelligence, companies' will experience: Poor audit performance due to control deficiencies; Service outages, unplanned work, and delayed delivery of strategic projects resulting from unauthorized and undocumented changes; Increased risk and lack of assurance surrounding system security and data integrity Increased audit cost and scope.

We want to elevate BI infrastructure and applications to the next level. The evolution of Business Intelligence (BI) technology from a tactical tool to one of mission criticality demands expedited deployment processes, reduced deployment costs, complete compliance, and maximized ROI. That's why NOAD EQM goes beyond life cycle management and delivers solutions that address all aspects of a healthy BI infrastructure, including Change Management, Deployment Automation, User Activity Monitoring, and Compliance Management.

International Headquarters
NOAD Americas, Inc.

267 Fifth Avenue, Suite 908 New York, NY 10016

Phone: +1.212.265.6466 Fax: +1.212.265.6402

Email: info@noadbi.com

European Headquarters
NOAD Business Intelligence

Ambachtsweg 4 D-bis 3953 BZ Maarsbergen

Phone: +31 343 43 73 34 Fax: +31 343 43 73 51

Email: info@noadbi.com