Nice article here showing some of the cool stuff that Excel Services will deliver in the FS environment. Like the following slide:

And the business benefit output is as follows:

Out with the old and in with the new!

I have just seen this article by the Chair of the UK User Group, Simon Cox and Microsoft consultant Marc Holmes on HPC CCS architectures:

http://www.marcmywords.org/swap/aj11-hpc.pdf

The best snippets for me were:

1. High Productivity is not just speed of system for a few users but the best system for the most users and hence higher productivity
2. Consider the whole end to end process of tasks and how your HPC system integrates into those

Other technologies that are suggested include:

• Microsoft Compute Cluster Server 2003, http://www.microsoft.com/hpc
  
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (including SQL Server Integration
  Services), http://www.microsoft.com/sql
  
• Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation, http://wf.netfx.com
  
• Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation, http://wcf.netfx3.com
  
• Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation, http://wpf.netfx3.com/
  
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, http://www.microsoft.com/
  sharepoint/
  
• Microsoft Operations Manager, http://www.microsoft.com/mom
  
• Microsoft Windows PowerShell, http://www.microsoft.com/powershell

Makes good reading and a great insight into how HPC partners can grow their stack and value to the customer using software as the enabler - nice!

Thanks for passing on Simon!

It's an interesting report that looks at the BI and Search and how they will play together in the next year or so. The resume is:

• Dont expect one to takeover from the other
• BI and Search will work in tandem

Recommendations:

• Demand integration from BI and Search vendors
• Don't implement BI and Search in isolation - they should be treated as part of an information access strategy
• Search should be the way in which businesses find appropriate BI data pools

This article is a good synopsis of the typical structured versus unstructured data query discussion. In my mind it acknowledges that the market is changing that customers are tired of the huge BI projects and associated costs and that despite some of the misgivings of Enterprise Search it does deliver on 85% of user needs.

So what does this mean for a Microsoft partner;

• Position Microsoft BI and Microsoft Enterprise Search together as compliments - one will give immediate gains whilst the other will as a medium term project satisfy the more experienced consumers of a given business
• Skill up on the Microsoft offering through Quickstart and position yourself for the Search specialisation when released in July

All in all, great ways of combining immediate short term gain for a customer with Enterprise Search and a more medium term tailored structured analysis with BI.

Enjoy!