Smart(er) Reporting in BMC with Yellowfin: Webinar Recap

Welcome to the Smart(er) Reporting in BMC with Yellowfin webinar recap!

As BMC has initialized its end-of-life (EOL) plan for BMC Smart Reporting for Remedy, BMC customers have the opportunity to maintain their existing reporting and analytics to Yellowfin.

But what does EOL for Smart Reporting actually mean? How can the upgrade to Yellowfin de-risk your business, with zero down-time and all your current content for business continuity?

This is what our latest webinar covers, and this blog provides a helpful summary of the on-demand event for those who could not attend or who would like a quick text recap.

Speakers at the event included:

• Stephen Ball, Presales Director - Idera, DevTools
• Jean Lawson, EMEA Business Development & Partner Manager - Yellowfin
• Robert Jones, Solution Architect - Yellowfin

Watch the event on-demand, at your convenience by following our link. Now, a recap!

BMC Smart Reporting: An Origin Story

Many companies around the world rightly choose BMC’s tools for their capabilities, security and scalability. 

However, what BMC users may not yet know is that Yellowfin is actually the foundation for the BMC Remedy Smart Reporting product, having been based on an OEM implementation of Yellowfin’s versions 7 and 8, and an 8 year-old partnership between BMC and Yellowfin. 

BMC Remedy Smart Reporting a prime example of how easy it is to embed Yellowfin and its white-label BI extensibility into other business applications and systems, and bring several analytics features to established user-bases very quickly. 

Benefits for BMC Helix & Smart Reporting Customers to Upgrade to Yellowfin

The OEM version of Yellowfin that BMC Remedy users have enjoyed is a few years old. As such, it has not been updated to the latest version 9, which contains new best-in-class features of the Yellowfin suite (Guided NLQ, as an example) and the many benefits they bring to the table. 

The advantages that an upgrade to the latest version of Yellowfin can bring for these Smart Reporting users includes:

• Ability to open up to additional data sources into your dashboards and reporting (ITSM, HR, CRM, etc)
• Centralized monitoring of data for a more holistic, streamlined view into performance for increased response times
• Improved enterprise BI functionality
• New AI-powered analysis features such as Guided NLQ

All the while Smart Reporting customers can continue to use all their existing reports, work with BMC partners, and leverage their existing knowledge and skills, as Smart Reporting is effectively Yellowfin. There’s no risk, pain and expense of migration compared to moving to a dashboard only solution in Helix. In addition, there is an entire major version and over 2 years of additional innovation in Yellowfin 9.

Read More: Why Upgrading to Yellowfin is the Best Choice for BMC Remedy/Helix Users

Smart Reporting End-of-Life: What this means for BMC users

BMC has decided to re-platform Remedy into a new software as a service (SaaS) solution called BMC Helix, with the official end-of-life date for Remedy set for April 29th 2024. Previously, EOL targeted the end of 2022, but the complexity of the move has seen the date extended.

This move has many implications for current Smart Reporting users, some of which we covered in our previous webinar, Extending BMC Smart Reporting to Yellowfin BI. In the latest event, our webinar speakers discussed the following points in relation to Helix’s limitations vs Remedy:

Not a one-to-one replacement: BMC Helix is not a direct replacement for BMC Remedy, as it is using lighter analytics tooling (powered by Graphana). As such, its reporting and analysis capabilities are more basic, centered around dashboards, and may no longer be suitable for the needs of existing Remedy users.

Increased complexity: The conversion tool of Helix only pulls out the SQL of databases, meaning users have to rebuild all their reports and dashboards (including data visualizations) from Remedy in Helix manually, which takes a lot of time and effort; this has proven difficult for existing BMC Remedy users to adjust. Migration is complex and incomplete, and many users will require expensive Professional Services as Helix is built more around the admin role specifically. Meta-data content, for example, is not as user-friendly, ultimately limiting who can build reports.

Less features: The report filter, exporting data out, and data security and governance features of Helix are very limited in comparison to Remedy, and folders are organized very differently. It’s not as simple or intuitive to create dashboards and set controls as it is with Smart Reporting.

The Upgrade Journey: From Remedy to Yellowfin 

With that said, BMC Helix does bring some good features for users, and there’s no reason you can’t use both BMC Helix and Remedy (Yellowfin) side-by-side with your ITSM reports. In fact, Helix dashboards can work alongside Yellowfin quite nicely.

However, if you do choose to upgrade to Yellowfin, you have many more options available, and the upgrade journey is extremely flexible and advantageous for Remedy users. The webinar went over many examples, and we’ve rounded up the most important below.

Business continuity: Yellowfin BI can run BMC Smart Reporting Reports, meaning the transition from Remedy once the EOL date arrives to Yellowfin is virtually seamless and pain-free, with no risk to existing systems, minimal complexity, and zero downtime.

Existing knowledge base: Because BMC Customers and Partners are already familiar with Yellowfin BI – which includes thousands of trained professionals - gaining assistance in getting the most out of the full Yellowfin suite (which was not available in the OEM version of Yellowfin that powered Remedy) is faster and easier than moving over to Helix.

More features: Standalone Yellowfin has more functionality (e.g. many data sources) and Yellowfin’s latest version is over 2 years ahead of Smart Reporting, with several new tools such as Guided NLQ, Assisted Insights, Yellowfin Signals and Stories/Present fully available to use. It also means Remedy users won’t have to worry about any loss of features they have gotten used to - they actually get the same feature-set, along with a lot more new tools!

Synchronized security: It is possible to sync BMC Remedy and Yellowfin, including single sign-on (SSO) and data access.

Ultimately, Yellowfin is just the Smart Reporting BMC users already know and love, just smarter and faster. The fact that BMC users can move forward from Remedy in mere hours with near zero risk, keep your current content, and access enhanced speed and new features makes Yellowfin 9 an attractive proposition.

Do More With Yellowfin 9: How to Get Started

Yellowfin 9 brings more functionality (automation, data storytelling, self-service analytics) for BMC Smart Reporting users with zero downtime. Upgrade your solution with us, and learn what new capabilities you can unlock in our on-demand webinar.