Microsoft BI : new and improved

Microsoft made some significant Business Intelligence (BI) announcements at it's BI conference, held in Seattle, WA, USA from 9-11 May.

In his keynote speech, Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s business division, declared “a new day for BI,” as he rattled off a string of announcements relating to new products, a small technology acquisition, and deepening alliances with implementation partners.

On the product front, Microsoft gave some details about the next version of its SQL Server database, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, formerly codenamed “Katmai”. SQL Server 2008 adds greater data scalability, developer functionality, and new policy-based management tools to enable more broad-scale deployment of BI across the enterprise, referred to as “pervasive BI.”

Significantly for BI, SQL Server 2008 tightens up integration between SQL Server’s back-end and Microsoft’s Office 2007 front-end tools like Excel 2007, Excel Services, SharePoint Server, and PerformancePoint Server 2007 platforms. The goal here is to enable SQL Server BI data to be pushed out to information workers via familiar and easy-to-use tools and applications on the desktop. For example, BI data can be accessed directly via Excel for a rich experience, or rendered “thinly” via Excel Services.

For developers, SQL Server 2008 also offers an integrated Visual Studio and .NET Framework development environment that Microsoft said will provide a higher level of abstraction to speed up applications builds. Tools are also provided to synch data from remotely connected devices to the central SQL Server data store.

Microsoft’s new Office-based PerformancePoint Server 2007 software is planned to be released in the second half of 2007, and is Microsoft’s first serious offering in the Corporate Performance Management (CPM) space, offering integrated planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and scorecarding capabilities. It builds on the previous Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005, recently acquired ProClarity technologies and new innovations in business modeling and planning, budgeting, and forecasting.

PerformancePoint Server 2007 will be licensed following the same traditional single server and single Client Access License (CAL) model that it uses for Office – at US$195 a licence. The product is now in its second community technology preview.

Microsoft also announced the acquisition of SoftArtisans, a relatively small developer of a managed report authoring tool for Office environments. SoftArtisans’ OfficeWriter tool will now be combined into Microsoft Office 2007 and SQL Server’s Reporting Services software to help non-technical users author and consume reports in Office environments using simple drag-and-drop.

Microsoft also discussed its network of BI partnerships with systems integrators, announcing deepened alliances with Accenture, Capgemini, and Tata Consulting Services (TCS). All three have pledged to commit greater resources to developing on the Microsoft BI platform.

Microsoft and Accenture have already set up a joint IT consulting venture called Avanade that has 400 dedicated Microsoft BI professionals provided from both companies. The consultancy is currently developing a new sales planning application for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM suite. It is also working to align its existing budgeting, forecasting, planning, and scorecard applications more closely with PerformancePoint Server 2007.

Capgemini and Microsoft have jointly launched a global “Intelligence Enterprise” initiative to train 2,000 on Microsoft’s BI technologies. Around 500 of these will be trained in PerformancePoint Server 2007. Capgemini has also pledged to create five new development centres, with a strong focus on developing Microsoft-based BI applications for verticals like financial services, retail, telecoms, and utilities.

Links:
Microsoft Business Intelligence
Microsoft President Jeff Raikes Declares, “It’s a New Day for Business Intelligence”