SQL & BI : BI

SQL Server 2008

EmmaB — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:29:15 GMT

Want to know more about the features in SQL Server 2008 around BI?

Take a look at this whitepaper....

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/sql_2008_bi.mspx

Included in This Document:

Introduction
Unifying Data Storage and Access
Building and Managing Sophisticated BI Solutions
Extending the Reach of Your BI Solution
Conclusion

PerformancePoint events

EmmaB — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:39:55 GMT

Just seen these PerformancePoint events through the partner community. Partners can invite their customers to the morning event and then join them at lunch and attend the afternoon event.

Events for Customers:

Monday 19^th November - AM - Cardinal Place, London

Register here or call 0870 166 6680 ref 6729

Wednesday 28^th November - AM - Cardinal Place, London

Register here or call 0870 166 6680 ref 6839

Tuesday 22^nd January - AM - Microsoft, Edinburgh

Register here or call 0870 166 6680 ref 5870

Events for Partners:

Monday 19^th November - PM - Cardinal Place, London

Register here or call 0870 166 6680 ref 6834

Wednesday 28^th November - PM - Cardinal Place, London

Register here or call 0870 166 6680 ref 6838

Tuesday 22^nd January - PM - Microsoft, Edinburgh

Register here or call: 0870 166 6680 ref 6303

Performance Point is now on Volume Licencing

EmmaB — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 00:44:56 GMT

See more @ www.microsoft.com/performancepoint

Please see below the relevant information to get started.

In addition there is lots of helpful documents... check out the Office Developer Portal and TechCenter for deployment and operations guides, technical whitepapers and ‘how-to’ help and tips.

Finally, look out for the PerformancePoint Server books and online training webcasts, as they should help you get started!

Licensing

Find answers to your licensing questions

· PPS licensing site

· Volume Licensing site

Collateral Update

· New! PerformancePoint Server TechNet webcasts

· New! Upcoming PerformancePoint Server online training

· New! Pre-order PerformancePoint Server book on Monitoring and Analysis

· New! Pre-order PerformancePoint Server book on Planning

MOPPS training - thats Performance Point!

EmmaB — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:31:15 GMT

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Technical training.

This four day instructor-led workshop provides students with the knowledge and skills to architect and build Business Intelligence solutions using Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. This session covers both Monitoring and Analytics and Planning. Participants will build on their base knowledge through extensive, hands on, exercises.

We have limited availability on these dates:

January 15^th. Edinburgh

January 22^nd – 25^th, Altrincham

New date added: January 8^th Maidenhead

For more information and to enrol, click here: https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/search.aspx?ssid=C06EE50879C54AF0B66F53466EA43CFC

SAP to buy Business Objects

EmmaB — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:27:17 GMT

There has been speculation around this for some time but it has now been announced that SAP are to buy Business Objects. At a cost of $6.8B. More consolidation of the market.

Find out more here

UK BI Community Day

EmmaB — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:59:00 GMT

We are holding a Community event for our UK Partners that have attained the Data Management Competency.

Please look at the below details and register....

Data Management Partner BI Community Event – 27th September 2007

Dear Partner,

I would like to invite you to an exclusive event held for Microsoft Partners with the Data Management Competency.

To support the investment that you have made in achieving this competency we are hosting an exclusive Managed Partner briefing that will deepen your understanding of our strategy and future roadmap for our BI and Data Management solutions.

Please save this date in your diary and join us for this important event.

Event Overview

Microsoft Business Intelligence is a complete offering, enabling all decision-makers to drive increased business performance at strategic, tactical and organisational levels. By reaching every employee — from information worker to CEO — by adding value to every decision, integrating process and promoting collaboration, Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions help increase the impact of all employees, and the businesses they represent.

Why Join us?

Analyst overview from Freeform Dynamics on some recent research findings into the issues and opportunities for partners around Business Intelligence.

Listen to the latest developments of SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008, and a heads-up on why Data Protection Manager is important to Data Management partners.

Hear the latest details on Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 and the upcoming launch.

Agenda

09:00AM Registration

09:30AM Introduction

09:45AM Recent BI Research – Dale Vile –Freeform Dynamics

10:15AM Update on SQL Server 2005 and SQL 2008

11:00AM Break

11:15AM Data Protection Manager

11:30AM Update on MOPPS 2007

12:00PM Call to Action

12:15PM Lunch

13:30PM Close

Register

https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-GB&eventid=1032349921

Or telephone: 0870 166 6653

Location

De Vere West One

West One

9-10 Portland Place

London

W1B 1PR

http://www.devere.co.uk/venues/West-One/business-services.aspx

I look forward to seeing you there.

4 cool new features in SQL Server 2008

EmmaB — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:47:45 GMT

Here is a good summary of cool new features as per latest Community Technology Preview (CTP) for SQL Server 2008.

Article here

Oracle charges for extra functionality

EmmaB — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:38:22 GMT

Oracle has released details on the pricing of its Oracle Database 11g software, disclosing that some of the most talked-about features in the new release will be sold as extra-cost add-ons.

When the vendor announced the 11g version of its database in New York, company executives spoke at length about new functionality but didn't address pricing.

Worth bearing in mind for any Partners that are comparing the costs of SQL- based solutions.

Full article here

Microsoft Partners Stake Claims in Sharepoint Goldmine

EmmaB — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:32:42 GMT

When we are talking to our Partners it is important that we highlight the opportunity around expanding the Microsoft stack. For this reason, Sharepoint is an important product for any partners in the BI space.

This article about how Microsoft partners are seeing healthy, sustained services revenue from deployments of Sharepoint Server 2007 is a great bit of evidence on the story.

Find out more about the Goldmine

"Katmai" Anchor for BI Strategy

EmmaB — Fri, 11 May 2007 18:00:21 GMT

The first Microsoft BI Conference has taken place and as expected there have been some announcements!

Take a look at this summary on Microsoft Watch.

"Today, during its Business Intelligence Conference, Microsoft affirmed that next version SQL Server, code name Katmai, would ship in 2008. Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's Business division, described SQL Server as the "base" for the company's business intelligence strategy.... "

Article here

More UK BI Bootcamps

EmmaB — Tue, 01 May 2007 21:23:39 GMT

Due to high popularity, we have just released 2 more dates for UK BI Bootcamps. Many of you have been asking me for this so please take a look and get booked on.

Duration: 5 days

Dates:

11th June 2007 @ London

25th June 2007 @ Maidenhead

Overview

With the release of SQL Server 2005, Microsoft has completely re-architected their Business Intelligence (BI) platform. Veteran BI professionals who want to upgrade their skills and newcomers alike will learn how to apply key BI concepts using the new 2005 Integration Services (formerly DTS), Analysis Services, and Reporting Services.

Book here

44CO018 - SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence Bootcamp

Top Ten Tips: sorting, grouping, and summarising SQL data

EmmaB — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 19:50:00 GMT

Arranging data in a manner that's meaningful can be a challenge. Sometimes a simple sort will do it. But sometimes you will need to do more by creating groups to analyse and summarise. Fortunately, SQL offers a number of clauses and operators for sorting, grouping, and summarising. The following tips will help you discern when to sort, when to group, and when and how to summarize.

http://www.builderau.com.au/program/sqlserver/soa/10_tips_for_sorting_grouping_and_summarizing_SQL_data/0%2C339028455%2C339274648%2C00.htm

Don't be disappointed - extra dates for UK BI Bootcamp!

EmmaB — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 19:19:00 GMT

I recently blogged about BI Bootcamp training we are holding here in UK. Some courses have become fully booked so we have added some extra dates and some new locations.

Dates:

26th March: London
21st May: Altrincham

Overview:

This is a 5 day course with a combination of instructor-led sessions and hands-on exercises.

44CO018 - SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence Bootcamp

To enrol:

Enrol now using the new Partner Learning Centre - click on the link above

If you are new to this tool and need some help you can the UK Partner Learning Centre Support number 0870 8509442 or mailto:ukplc@microsoft.com.

Oracle - Consolidation continues

EmmaB — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:55:21 GMT

Just back from my holidays and yet more consolidation of the BI marketplace has taken place! There has been speculation on potential acquisitions recently and Gartner has been suggesting that this market will move towards a smaller number of "mega-vendors".

Larry Ellison is spending $3.3 billion on Hyperion.

Here is the Oracle announcement.

Microsoft has a strong capability message in this space - SQL Server 2005, the 2007 Office System, and the new PerformancePoint Server.

MIcrosoft also has a great interoperabiltiy story with both Hyperion and SAP products.

For customers using Hyperion today, Microsoft and Hyperion announced a partnership in April 2006 to deliver tighter integration between our respective technologies. As part of this agreement, Microsoft has delivered integration as part of SQL Server 2005 SP2 to enable SQL Server Reporting Services to query Hyperion Essbase cubes (see this whitepaper).

For customers using SAP today, Microsoft has a strong partnership with SAP and integration with their products. Customers can use SQL Server Reporting Services to build high quality reports on SAP NetWeaver BI sources (see whitepaper). See more details on the Microsoft SAP interoperability page for BI.

In addition, Microsoft have a migration offer (50% discount on SQL Server license) on qualifying competitive database migrations.

Still #1 on OLAP report

EmmaB — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:05:23 GMT

Good news from www.olapreport.com – Microsoft continues to be number 1 and grow OLAP market share!

We have almost one third of the market share (31.6%) (last year 27.9%).

We were also one of the few vendors that actually grew market share last year and with the exception of Applix, Microsoft was the fastest growing OLAP vendor.

"Microsoft finally managed to release its long-delayed SQL Server 2005 a few weeks before the end of 2005, so the much enhanced new release was available for all of 2006. The growth rate of SQL Server (and therefore Analysis Services) duly jumped, and ran at over 30 percent throughout the year. This increased growth rate is unlikely to continue in 2007, as no major releases are due.

During 2006, Microsoft also acquired ProClarity. With Microsoft behind it, ProClarity’s sales also jumped. Note that the mere acquisition of ProClarity did not increase Microsoft's OLAP market share, as we were already including ProClarity in the Microsoft ecosystem, but the acceleration of ProClarity sales does increase it slightly, assuming that some of the ProClarity sales were made instead of Excel rather than, say, Panorama.

Microsoft announced PerformancePoint in late 2006, which will ship in about September 2007. It entered the CTP phase at the end of 2006, and was quickly downloaded thousands of times. Although PerformancePoint itself is unlikely to generate significant revenues during 2007, it may help SQL Server sales. In any case, PerformancePoint will replace ProClarity and Microsoft’s existing Business Scorecard Manager, so some of its sales will simply replace the older products."

Take a look at the full report to read more.