Hey, Brian
One of Microsoft's biggest ambitions is to be leading the Business
Intelligence (BI) arena. In 2007, they have announced the release of
several new products and integration with the Office suite (especially
Excel). I would really consider the Microsoft suite of BI offerings
that will be coming up in the next year. Like Ted said,
PerformancePoint will be a key product to get into BIPM, and will allow
users to view scorecard technology, data mining, cube analysis, etc.
They will be leveraging a lot of their BI offerings with Office and
SharePoint, in order to provide the end users access to data w/ tools
like Excel and their web browser (IE) which they're already familiar
with and comfortable using.
Since your company is a MS shop, and they already run SQL Server, the
license for Reporting Services is included, so you can have a pretty
good reporting engine up and running fairly quickly. Reporting
Services can connect to several data sources including OLTP and OLAP,
such as SQL Server DB, Analysis Services cubes, Oracle, XML web
services (RS 2005), and in the SP2 of SQL 2005, they will be adding
support for Hyperion. If you already have cubes setup in an Analysis
Services database, you can simply write the MDX (or use the MDX query
generator in RS 2005) for the report query, then design your report
layout, and the learning curve for Reporting Services is fairly
minimal.
I have seen a lot of companies that used Crystal reports as their main
reporting tool, move away from that and migrate all their reports to
Reporting Services because the licensing is much more cost effective --
it's included w/ their SQL Server license!
I would definitely recommend spending some time in the MS BI web site
to learn about their future offerings in that area.
(
http://www.microsoft.com/bi)
Regards,
Thiago Silva, MCAD.NET
[quoted text, click to view] On Nov 22, 10:09 pm, "Ted Malone" <ted.nospam.mal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Brian Shannon" <brian.shan...@diamondjo.com> wrote in messagenews:O2$FcrnDHHA.1220@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>
> > BO presented me with really nice web intelligence software which is all
> > integrated with the BO product line. The products were: BO Web
> > Intelligence, BO Predictive Analysis, BO Set Analysis. These products
> > seem easy to use and the data can all be analyzed through the web once the
> > developer creates the middle layer.
>
> > I know MS has SSAS which contains the cube technology and data mining.
>
> > Do they offer a packaged product ready for enduser use similiar to BO?
> > Do you need to program your needs in the BI environment to develop what
> > your looking for?Take a look at Microsoft Performance Point 2007, as it will help you do much
> of what you're looking for.
>
>
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/performancepoint/FX101680481033.aspx >
> Hope this helps.
>
> Ted
