Have you been forced to buy a new cell phone because there are no new app updates available? And whenever you see someone else’s phones, they operate faster than yours does and have all the latest features?
The average life of a handset in the U.S. is about 21 months, according to Recon Analytics. That means we purchase a new phone every two years – wow!
It is also noted that apps are updated one to four times a month on average, so you can imagine at the rate technology is changing, hardware tends to be become obsolete quickly.
The same can also be said about hardware and software for businesses.
In the world of SAP BusinessObjects, we must understand that each version is developed with the latest software and hardware at that time. As we have all seen, our current pace of technology development is making any new developments obsolete in about six to ten years.
Another important piece of aging software and hardware to consider is support compliance. If a software is not updated and it falls into the out-of-support category, then the software vendor is not legally responsible to assist with any encountered issues. This forces organizations to upgrade their underlying hardware to support new software (operating systems, databases etc).
SAP has announced the end of life for SAP products on Windows Server 2008/2008 R/2 effective January 2020. Although 4.2 products have been tested to work on the Windows 2008 R2 platform (see the snapshot of the PAM below) it is likely that increased issues with windows updates and other potential platform interactions will make it ill-advised for customers to carry on without SAP support.
Upgrading the operating system on the host machine comes with its own specific project planning as well. SAP support does offer steps for this and we at InfoSol also have experience that can help you stay in compliance.
Another thing to consider is if this might be the time to move to a new image or new system altogether. The InstallCache for many customers in upgrade cycles is often pretty big and old systems will have their own archive needs and may require a little freshening up.
We recently did an upgrade with the new ONE files that include patches with service packs, which helps some (kudos to SAP!), but it still came with its own run book of necessary steps. Going back to our original premise, sometimes just because you can keep it on the same server, doesn’t mean you should!
Here are a few important dates that may have immediate impact on you existing BusinessObjects environment.
| SAP BI Release | End of Mainstream Maintenance | End of Priority-one Support |
| 3.1 | 31-Dec-15 | 12/31/2018 |
| 4 | 31-Dec-15 | 31-Dec-17 |
| 4.1 | 31-Dec-18 | 31-Dec-20 |
| 4.2 | 31-Dec-22 | 31-Dec-24 |
| 4.3 | 31-Dec-24 | 31-Dec-26 |
| Operating System | End of Mainstream Support | End of Extended Support |
| Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 | January 13, 2015 | January 14, 2020 |
| Database | End of Mainstream Maintenance | End of Priority-one Support |
| Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 3 | July 8, 2014 | July 9, 2019 |
| Oracle 10.2 | July 2010 | July 2013 |
| Oracle 11.1 | August 2012 | August 2015 |
| Oracle 11.2 | January 2015 | December 2020 |
| Oracle 12.2 | March 2022 | March 2025 |
Blog written in collaboration with Minith Patel 
