Business Intelligence & Corporate Performance Management
Next Generation Business Intelligence (BI) Tools from Microsoft
Once of the benefits of working with the Microsoft technology set is constant development and innovation. The following page outlines some of the additional functionality and services that are already scheduled for release in the coming months. You can be sure that CIBER will be well placed to help customers take advantage of them as they become availale to the market.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Excel Services 2007
Excel Services is a new server technology included in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. This shared service allows you to load, calculate, and display Excel workbooks on Office SharePoint Server 2007. Using Excel Services, you can easily reuse and share Excel workbooks on Office SharePoint Server 2007 portals and dashboards. For example, financial analysts, business planners, or engineers can create content in Excel and share it with others by using an Office SharePoint Server 2007 portal and dashboard—without writing custom code. You can control which data is displayed, and you can maintain a single version of your Excel workbook.
Microsoft PerformancePoint 2007
Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (former codename was Biz#), a complete Performance Management (PM) application including business score carding, analytics and planning that is designed to enable companies to more effectively plan and manage their businesses. This new application represents the latest Microsoft investment in business intelligence (BI).
Microsoft Office Excel 2007
Microsoft has finally realized that Excel needs a better integration with its DW/BI databases. The pivot table has been greatly improved and is becoming almost something like a complete OLAP client, including sorting, filtering and the like. In fact, the new pivot tables can compete with current 3rd Party Excel clients. Microsoft also introduces the CUBEVALUE formula in Excel which increases the capabilities of Excel as a database client tool as DW/BI data can now me linked into any spreadsheet. Excel will also introduce powerful new visualising capabilities, like data bars in cells, colour grading, better table formats, top/bottom visualization, etc., which are all very easy and flexible to use. The Excel charting engine has also been revolutionised now providing the ability to create professional charts.
