| | | Business Intelligence and Collaboration: The new frontier of decision making |
Forward By Kristina Kerr How often do consult with your colleagues or an expert when you're making an important business decision? Probably most, if not all, of the time. A natural step in the decision-making process is to collaborate with people to ensure expertise, insight and stakeholder opinions are factored into each decision. Technology is evolving to support this growing trend (see Gartner's report titled The Rise of Collaborative Decision Making). Microsoft customers, like Univerzal Banka, are at the front of this technology curve using Microsoft SharePoint Server, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Office Excel for BI and collaboration. This allows Univerzal Banka personnel to boost their productivity and work more closely with colleagues. Effective decision-making also requires data in the hands of everyone who needs it. That's why Microsoft has made large investments in managed self-service BI that enables end users to quickly manipulate large datasets in Office Excel 2010 (often millions of rows), streamline the integration of data from heterogeneous sources, and effortlessly share analysis through SharePoint 2010. Scroll down to get a sneak peek at some minute-long vignettes of a project code named 'Gemini'. I encourage you to learn more about these important trends and their benefits at the upcoming SharePoint Conference 2009 and PASS Summit Unite 2009 - please note the special discount code for Microsoft guests below - where the BI team will show you how these innovations will help you make the most of your investments in the Microsoft BI platform. I look forward to seeing you there! Kristina Kerr Group Product Manager Microsoft Business Intelligence
Product News Financial Planning Accelerator Announced Microsoft will release the source code and project files derived from the PerformancePoint Server 2007 Planning module. This packaged source code will be called the Financial Planning Accelerator (FPA). The source code will be made available on a no-cost, individual license agreement basis and can be used to support or modify the PerformancePoint Server Planning module. Read the full press release
Microsoft BI Awards Customer and Partner Win Best Practice Award at TDWI Congratulations to Charlotte Mecklenberg Schools and Microsoft partner Mariner for their winning submission! They won a Best Practice Award for a dashboarding solution in the Government/Public Sector category. This is a great win for Microsoft Business Intelligence! Read the report
Customer Success Business Intelligence at Super Bowl XLIII When the City of Tampa, Florida, was chosen to host Super Bowl XLIII, it fell upon the Tampa Police Department to ensure public safety for the event. To coordinate efforts with more than 25 other agencies and first responders, the department used E.SPONDER, an online collaboration environment based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The solution provided a central repository for multiple agencies to gather planning information prior to the event; during the event, it enabled personnel on the ground and at incident command centers to share information in real time via a Web-based portal. Read the Customer Success or Watch the Video Univerzal Banka Learn how a rapidly growing bank in Eastern Europe uses business intelligence and collaboration. Their Office SharePoint 2007 portal is more than simply a way of sharing documents and controlling workflow; it delivers real business insight into the bank's operations. As Miloje Mijatovic, Executive Manager of the IT Division, states, "the advantage of our Microsoft solution is that it provides the information we need to increase efficiencies and the mechanism to introduce new processes". Read the Customer Success Florida Department of Education The DOE wanted to provide an easy, secure way to give teachers, legislators, and other stakeholders online access to the terabytes of student data collected since 1984. They were able to do so by using the Microsoft Business Intelligence offering of SQL Server, SharePoint, and Office. Read the Customer Success
Partners Performance Management Specialization Exam is now available The Performance Management Specialization exam for the BI competency has been updated. Exam 78-702 - Designing and Managing a Business Intelligence Solution is now available through Prometric. This exam is a replacement for the previous exam 70-556, which was primarily focused on the budgeting and planning functionality within PerformancePoint Server 2007. Exam 78-702 will test you on more of the Microsoft BI stack with questions across the multiple products, including SQL Server Analysis Services, Excel Services, SharePoint, as well as the Monitoring and Analyzing functionality that was in PerformancePoint Server and is being moved to SharePoint's PerformancePoint Services. Partner BI If you have any further questions, please contact Clay Williams. Microsoft Business Intelligence Partners of the Year Congratulations to our Business Intelligence Partner of the year award winner and finalists. This year there were over 60 submissions for the BI Partner of the year and there were a lot of great partners and solutions stories that were submitted. Unfortunately, there could only be one winner and two finalists. The winner and finalists this year were: Business Intelligence Partner of the Year: Solver, United States. Solver created a business intelligence solution to help state and local governments track performance according to stated goals, reduce costs, improve business processes, and increase government accountability and citizen satisfaction. This scalable solution was built leveraging the full stack of business intelligence tools from Microsoft including SQL Server, SharePoint, PerformancePoint Server, Excel, and many of the Dynamics products. With this solution, Solver was able to help the City of Chicago Department of Public Health maximize their grants, reduce costs, and increase revenue. Because the solution was delivered through a software-plus-services model and hosted for the City of Chicago, it reduced the infrastructure costs and resulted in a quicker implementation time.
Events Microsoft BI makes a splash at WPC The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference was held this month in New Orleans. This year's event was an excellent opportunity for partners to learn more about the Microsoft products, opportunities, and roadmaps, as well as connect with the Microsoft team and other Partners. This year, there was a lot of focus on Business Intelligence in both the keynotes, sessions and expo hall. If you were unable to attend the conference and would like to review the sessions, you will be able to at Digital WPC. The sessions are being uploaded to the site and will all be up in the next couple of weeks. Digital WPC SharePoint Conference 2009 We've got so much to tell you, but we can't, at least not yet anyway! We have almost 250 sessions planned, and over 80% of them will be brand new 2010 content. That's 15,000 minutes of SharePoint, SharePoint and more SharePoint that you're simply not going to get anywhere else! You'll get to listen, talk and network with Microsoft product experts, SharePoint MVPs, customers, top industry analysts and over 140 SharePoint partners. Microsoft is delighted to announce the SharePoint Conference 2009 - the premier worldwide conference dedicated to SharePoint and related technologies. This year's conference will be looking towards the future with a broad array of deep content centered on the next version of SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, and at the same time be firmly planted in the present, sharing real world experience and guidance to help you maximize your investment in SharePoint Server 2007. SharePoint Conference 2009 will be the conference to learn about SharePoint 2010. Be the first to learn about the improvements we've made to the platform and how many of those investments can be quickly implemented to add value to your organization and businesses. REGISTER NOW to attend from the 19th to the 22nd of October 2009 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada. SharePoint Conference Get Everything BI at PASS Summit 2009 As you may know, Microsoft has decided to make the BI Conference into a biennial event, with the next conference in 2010. For 2009, we are excited to team with the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) to expand the BI tracks at PASS Summit Unite 2009 and help deliver the content that BI architects, developers, and administrators need to get the most value from their Microsoft SQL Server and BI-based solutions. PASS Summit Unite 2009 will be held Nov. 2-5 in Seattle, WA plus full-day Pre/Post-Conference seminars on Nov. 1 and Nov. 6. BI-specific full-day seminars include - Building a Microsoft Data Warehousing platform, delivering Business Intelligence to the masses and Data Warehouse dimensional design and architecture planning. To learn more about PASS Summit Unite 2009 and to register, visit the website at http://summit2009.sqlpass.org. You can also follow them on Twitter at www.twitter.com/sqlpass. Take $500 off with the code MSCOM3D (no expiration date) Microsoft BI Conference
Through 2009 and 2010 we will see more news and advancements around Microsoft BI as we lead into the launches of the next versions of Office, SharePoint and SQL Server. Due to this flurry of activity, and the global economic constraints to travel budgets worldwide, we are moving the BI conference to a bi-annual event. The next BI Conference, originally scheduled for October 2009, will be moved to October 2010 in Seattle, WA, and all further BI Conferences will be held every second year on an ongoing basis.
Resources Self Service Analysis in Excel with 'Gemini' In Excel 2010, Gemini's in-memory engine allows users to interactively explore and perform calculations on large data sets. Watch a series of short informative videos about self-service analysis within Excel, or go to the Gemini site.
Improve Performance Get the Right Information to the Right People Faster Using investments you have already made, Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions improve performance by driving better decision making through familiar interfaces users work in everyday. With Microsoft Business Intelligence, you can focus your resources-whether they are people, technology, or capital assets-to achieve your goals and generate the maximum return for your organization. You get the right information to the right people faster. As a result, they make smarter, more informed decisions, increasing efficiencies in the short term and positioning the company for growth in the long term. To learn more, visit our website.
Subscribe Did You Receive The Business Intelligence Newsletter from a Friend? The Microsoft Business Intelligence Newsletter is full of the latest news, resources, product information and events related to Microsoft BI that we encourage subscribers to forward to friends and co-workers. If you've received this issue from someone via e-mail and would like to receive the free Microsoft Business Intelligence Newsletter bimonthly, all you have to do is subscribe
| 
