Swiss IT Professional and TechNet Blog : Business Intelligence

Swiss SQL Server Saturday - 19th September 2009 - Digicomp Academy (Zurich) - Free Event

mepprecht — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:28:00 GMT

Swiss SQL Server Saturday is an opportunity to connect with other Database and BI professionals to learn from Database, Application Development and BI experts about topics that you’ll immediately be able to put into use.

With 15 great sessions covering topics from Silverlight to Datamining, Clustering to Performance Tuning, SSIS to Gemini you’ll find that your Saturday is put to excellent use!

The event is FREE to attend, organised by the Swiss PASS Chapter and supported by Quest, Microsoft and Digicomp. To register go to http://www.sqlsaturday.ch

Business Intelligence Event - How to go from Data to Decisions

mepprecht — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:25:22 GMT

Business intelligence is even more important during these tough economic times. People have to make really important decisions and critical strategic moves.

In this one-day seminar, Rafal Lukawiecki aims to show IT Managers and BI practitioners how to improve decision making and getting the valuable business insight by using Microsoft solutions. This seminar will look at an end-to-end approach to building and delivering a Microsoft BI solution, from automated data integration and consolidation to delivering insight in reports, scorecards, and Excel. To make this seminar easier and more pleasant to follow we structured it so that the first half focuses on the goals of BI, performance management, and the knowledge worker. The second half will stress the underlying technologies and the development and deployment processes.

Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Time: 09:00 to 16:30
Language: English
Venue: Microsoft Switzerland (Zurich), Wallisellen 8304

Registration, agenda and more information:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032404905&Culture=en-us

New TechNet Event Calendar Web Page

mepprecht — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:20:40 GMT

Microsoft Switzerland now has a new page to show the TechNet Events/Seminars.

http://www.microsoft.com/switzerland/server/de/events/default.mspx

You now have an overview all off the Swiss TechNet events, including the Content, Session Description, Date and Venue. On each link from this page, you can get detailed information about each event, including detailed information and the Live-ID enabled registration link.

I hope to meet you are more of the TechNet events.

SharePoint and PerformancePoint….better together

mepprecht — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:48:09 GMT

It was just announced a few days ago that PerformancePoint Server will not longer exist as a stand-alone product. It's functionality will be integrated into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. Exact details and the reasoning behind this are described below in the SharePoint Senior PM blog entry:

What is being announced?

As part of this vision, and feedback from a wide variety of customers, PerformancePoint scorecarding and dashboarding capabilities will now become part of SharePoint Enterprise CAL and available to customers who are on SharePoint SA. This means that customers who want to deploy PerformancePoint can do so today at no additional cost.

In mid 2009, we will release PerformancePoint Server 2007 “service pack 3” which will include updates to the current product’s planning module. Thereafter, customers should not expect further investment in standalone versions of PerformancePoint Server. However, we will continue to invest in a performance management platform and increased functionality through Excel, SharePoint and SQL Server to support broad-based performance management models and simulations. These changes enable customers to deploy a complete BI solution with existing investments in SharePoint Server, SQL Server, and Excel.

What does this mean for you?

Microsoft is removing the barriers for customers who want to deploy a complete Business Intelligence solution, leveraging their existing investments in SharePoint Server, SQL Server, and Excel. Customers with SharePoint ECAL SA will have rights to deploy PerformancePoint Server today. PerformancePoint’s scorecard capabilities are certified by the Balanced Scorecard Institute/Palladium, building on the capabilities first introduced in Business Scorecard Manager. This means companies can implement their scorecards, following any methodology they choose, and accurately reflect this with their company strategy. The contextual dashboards allow organizations to create data-rich views that are interactive and change based on the users context. Organizations can create rich views that combine Excel, Excel Services, SharePoint Lists, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, and relational information to accurately reflect the business, measure the right information, and quickly understand changes in real-time.

This capability augments the team-based KPIs in SharePoint today, and utilizes the Excel Services environment, already allowing customers to share and reuse their workbooks in personal dashboards across the organization.

What can you do today?

More information is available on http://www.microsoft.com/bi regarding this announcement; here are some links to specific product capabilities and how-to's, to help you get started. Now, there is no excuse to start rolling out a complete BI solution, one that you know will be utilized because it uses the technologies you know today, and works with the systems you are already familiar with.

More information is avalable on http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/

(The article was originally posted on the German Language Swiss IT Professional and TechNet Blog by Stefan Hagenbuch)

SQL Server Energy 2008 Vienna

mepprecht — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 02:57:47 GMT

SQL Server Energy 2008

Dates: 25.-26. November 2008

Venue: Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria

Information und Registration: www.sqlserverenergy.at

Note: The web site and registration is in German, the sessions at SQL Energy will be in English.

Rafal Lukawiecki, Robert Bruckner, Dejan Sarka, Steffen Krause, Itzik Ben-Gan, Ramesh Meyyappan, Maciej Pilecki, Kevin Ashby, Al Comeau, Michael Epprecht, and, and, and...some of the best international speakers in their fields of expertise in Data management with Microsoft SQL Server are coming to Vienna for the official Launch Conference for SQL Server 2008 in Austria: the SQL Server Energy 2008!

During these two days, you will get an extensive technical overview in the areas of Data Warehousing, Upgrade and Migration, Developer Productivity, Reporting and much more. 23 Sessions and 5 Chalk Talks will be presented in 2008 Minutes, covering the most important Information on SQL Server 2008. In varying technical levels, that are matched to your needs, you can experience Top International Speakers and SQL Server experts in Vienna! Get to know Microsoft Employees from the SQL Product Team in Redmond, and learn about the product from the people who know it best!

Business Intelligence Conference 2008

Date: 27. November 2008

Venue: Leopold Museum, Wien

Information und Registration: www.microsoft.com/austria/bi

Note: The web site and registration is in German, the sessions at Business Intelligence Conference 2008 will be in German.

Without a doubt, you have invested in the last few years in IT Solutions for Reporting, Planning and Data . In many companies, there are already multiple Business Intelligence Systems in use. Now how do you achieve the required ROI on these investments? What is easier for employees to use than the already installed and trusted tools available to surface Business Intelligence, namely Excel, instead of expensive tools that require intensive training and expensive maintenance? And what benefits would your organization reap if consolidated data is present in a performant and inexpensive database, like SQL Server 2008? Just imagine the benefits!

At the Microsoft-Conference for Decision Makers, you can expect the newest information about BI Platforms and practical presentations in 2 tracks. Let yourself be informed by us about current solutions surrounding Monitoring, Analysis, Data Warehousing, Reporting and Data Mining, and at the same time, exchange ideas with colleagues; Local and International Experts, and Austrian Bi Solution partners. See how some CFO’s and CIO’s from customers present their current solutions surrounding Business Intelligence.