Business Intelligence

Microsoft BI capabilities in SQL Server help empower people to unlock data by using familiar tools to gain insights that result in better, faster, and more relevant decisions.

Rely on familiar tools

• Easily integrate data from multiple sources, and interactively model and analyze large amounts of information from within Microsoft Excel by using PowerPivot for Excel.

• Reduce training requirements and support how people work today by relying on familiar applications.

• Create and share critical BI among peers and departments by using familiar tools like Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint Server.

Extend the value of existing solutions

• Get more from the information, BI solutions, and infrastructure that IT already delivers.

• Avoid laborious and problematic data integration and increase business user efficiency by using a BI platform that is tightly integrated from the desktop to your data sources and across the organization.

By using SQL Server 2008 R2, users can promote sharing, collaboration, and automation of the dissemination of reliable, insightful information.

Rely on consistent information

• Publish Excel files and reports to a central SharePoint Server library to maintain a common, shared source.

• Manage content and reports centrally, and rely on server-based calculations and rendering for continuous accuracy.

• Load, calculate, display, and reuse Excel workbooks on SharePoint Server 2010 by using Excel Services.

Extend the value of reports

• Share and collaborate with reports, dashboards, and Excel workbooks using SharePoint Server.

• Enable users to create reports and explore data with Report Builder 3.0, a familiar report-authoring environment with rich visualizations.

• Reuse existing objects from Reporting Services to create new reports in just minutes.

Share goals, metrics, and greater insights more broadly

• Convey organizational strategy and metrics so that people can understand performance and make adjustments to meet business goals.

• Simplify sharing and discovery so that users can find the information they need and collaborate with others.

• Deliver and access richly formatted, up-to-date reports more efficiently by using a single, collaborative workspace and flexible options for publishing and consuming reports.

• Schedule reports to deliver real-time business results at specific times and location.

• Deliver reports through email messages or post them to a shared folder on a network.

• Enable users to subscribe to reports.

• Create subscriptions to centrally manage automated, multi-recipient report delivery.

• Securely deliver data for desktop analytics with PowerPivot for Excel by using reports as data feeds through an OData renderer.

Organizations can extend the impact of BI while increasing IT and developer efficiency by delivering and efficiently managing a highly available, secure, and interoperable BI platform with SQL Server 2008 R2.

Provide a complete and integrated platform for BI

• Rely on an affordable, standards-based, manageable, scalable, and unified BI architecture.

• Achieve lower total-cost-of-ownership through rationalizing and standardizing the organizational approach to BI.

• Avoid complexity, cost, and integration headaches by using a common platform for BI functions including solutions from third-party software providers.

Simplify oversight with management tools

• Track data and workbook usage per user to understand usage patterns and decide where to invest resources.

• Build and share usage reports to justify spending and establish service-level agreements.

• Analyze usage data to track and understand adoption rates of various applications and data that your organization provides.

• Gain more visibility into how data is used within the organization.

Efficiently manage the BI solutions people use

• Gain insight into usage and metrics, such as query performance and hardware utilization, through strong integration with the SharePoint Central Administration.

• Optimize resource usage based on activity without active IT involvement by relying on automated loading and unloading of PowerPivot databases on SharePoint Server.

• Centrally apply and manage access privileges to organizational data and user-generated solutions.

Respond rapidly to changing business needs

• Disseminate data in a way that is readily consumable by business users while automatically deriving usage monitoring.

• Manage organizational data more easily no matter the type, and ensure proper records management, audit, and control.

• Increase transparency of BI solutions, and key metrics to identify, isolate, and correct business issues to improve organizational performance.

• Reduce risk by relying on a comprehensive and integrated set of technologies for BI, including desktop applications, a business collaboration platform, and complete data infrastructure and BI platform.

• Avoid the high costs of integrating or developing solutions from scratch.

• Deliver reliable, up-to-date data in a timely fashion.