Practical Business Intelligence

Post 1 in a series of 4, in which I share my thoughts on how our vendors did at the BI Tool Vendor Grudge Match last week, and on the details of their presentations. You might also check out my summary post earlier this week on PBI.

Company: Microsoft
Presenter: Dan Vandercar, Technical Presales
At Microsoft: 4 years
In BI: 15 years
Gift selected: Capstone Hat

Dan’s presentation focused a lot on Microsoft Office as the end-user delivery vehicle for Microsoft-based BI. This has obvious pros–the almost universal proliferation of the Office product, universal look-and-feel/common interface, and extremely advanced analytical features, particularly in Excel and even more so in v2010 than in v2007. And Excel 2010 is going to be even more powerful in this role, as it will support an infinite number of rows, more tools for data mining and cleansing, etc.

But this is actually where my concerns lie as well. I don’t particularly like Excel’s impact on BI. Of course I understand that business users are addicted to it and that it’s very powerful. But when business users export a CSV from their favorite database or tool, roll it into their meticulously crafted Excel spreadsheet, and evolve it over weeks, months, even years … it becomes a source system. Achieving a single source of truth is harder, and integration of these Excel-based “systems” and the business logic they contain back into the data warehouse is extremely difficult. So, if Excel is the big value-add for Microsoft (and it was certainly the cornerstone of this presentation), then I become concerned. They even went so far as to point out that the integrated ETL features of SSIS make it even easier for users to pull data from the data warehouse (where it belongs) into Excel. This doesn’t make me warm and fuzzy.

Dan rightly pointed out that SQL Server has really “grown up,” now in v2008 truly a contender in the large dataset arena. Terabytes in SQL Server 2008? No problem, according to Microsoft. And that’s long overdue. He also mentioned that MS spent $9B in R&D last year. Rock on! I like hearing that.

I like that PerformancePoint is now rolled into MOSS, giving it dashboarding features out of the box. I don’t have much PerformancePoint exposure, though, so maybe someone with more experience here can comment further.

Last, one of the most significant points in this presentation is the number of partners, VARs, consultants, whole companies, etc. that use Microsoft tools to implement BI solutions. That gigantic developer community plays a very significant role in the ongoing evolution of the tool and in the ready availability of the help end users need to be successful with it.

Overall, I grade this presentation:  B

Part 1 of 2:

Part 2 of 2: