Business Intelligence & Corporate Performance Management
Current Business Intelligence (BI) Tools from Microsoft
Microsoft SQL Server 2005
The Microsoft SQL Server Product Suite offers a range of powerful features to support the construction and maintenance of resilient data management and BI solutions.
- SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
Integration Services is a platform for building high performance data integration and workflow solutions, including extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) operations for data warehousing. Integration Services includes graphical tools and wizards for building and debugging packages; tasks for performing workflow functions such as FTP operations, SQL statement execution, and e-mail messaging; data sources and destinations for extracting and loading data; transformations for cleaning, aggregating, merging, and copying data; a management service, the Integration Services service, for administering Integration Services packages; and application programming interfaces (APIs) for programming the Integration Services object model.
- SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)
Analysis Services provides a business semantic model, referred to as a Unified Dimensional Model (UDM) that defines business entities, business logic, calculations, and metrics. The UDM is a central place that serves as the single version of truth for all reports, spreadsheets, OLAP browsers, KPIs, and analytical applications. Using the powerful new Data Source View feature, the UDM is mapped to a host of heterogeneous back-end data sources, providing a complete and integrated picture of the business regardless of the location of the data. With friendly descriptions of the business entities, navigation hierarchies, multiple perspectives, and even automatic translations to native languages, users will find it easy to explore corporate business data.
- SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
SQL Server Reporting Services is a comprehensive, server-based solution that enables the creation, management, and delivery of both traditional, paper-oriented reports and interactive, Web-based reports. An integrated part of the Microsoft business intelligence framework, Reporting Services combines the data management capabilities of SQL Server and Microsoft Windows Server with familiar and powerful Microsoft Office System applications to deliver real-time information to support daily operations and drive decisions. Another element of Report Services is a tool called Report Builder. Report Builder allows end users the ability to build, maintain and develop reports across the web within a business user orientated environment.
Microsoft Balance Scorecard Manager 2005
Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 provides a platform for creating and deploying scorecards across an organisation - scorecards that allow users to see how their business is performing against a set of metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs). Balanced Scorecard is a framework to help organisations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into operational objectives that drive both performance and behaviour. It is a management system that uses measurement to provide feedback on internal processes and external outcomes in order to improve strategic performance and operational results.
Microsoft SharePoint Services 2003
Like most portal products, SharePoint allows visitors to create custom views of the Web site. This customisation can be very simple or very complex, depending on the type and version of the product that is installed. In addition, SharePoint has a powerful collaboration model that is tightly integrated with the Office 2003 suite, which allows for professional document management for all Microsoft Office file types (XLS, DOC, PPT for example.). The current version of SharePoint is its third (despite its name). Like most Microsoft software, (Windows in particular) version 3 is gaining rapid adoption. A recent article in The Register indicated that SharePoint Portal Server is Microsoft's fastest growing product, with 30 million licenses.
Microsoft Excel Add-In for SSAS
The Excel Add-in for Analysis Services enables users to access and analyse data from multiple Analysis Services Cubes, and to create rich, customised reports directly in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 or Microsoft Excel 2002. This add-in allows for the “best of both worlds” by providing the ease of use of Excel for data presentation whilst retaining the data along with its auditability and integrity within SSAS.
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006
BizTalk Server 2006 is Microsoft's premiere server for building EAI solutions for business process and integration. BizTalk Server 2006, the fourth major version of the product, builds on the innovation and success introduced by the previous three versions, BizTalk Server versions 2000, 2002, and 2004. The 2006 version includes new capabilities and engine improvements that allow a developer to create more flexible solutions for integrated business processes, and BizTalk 2006 empowers and enables administrators and business users to more effectively monitor ongoing business processes.
