Contents:
Upcoming Events
Upcoming Webcasts
Training: online and regional options
Resources: whitepapers, case studies, datasheets, webcasts, books, etc
News Links and Press Releases
Hot Topics
Business Intelligence for Everyone?
First of all, why? Business Intelligence implementations should enable business users to make better decisions quicker.
By ‘better’, we mean informed decisions supported by relevant information.
By ‘quicker’, we mean that information is more timely, more accessible and easier to understand.
Your organization will be more productive, more effective, and will grow faster when all employees are equipped to take the rights actions to succeed. When your organization’s systems and processes are aligned to enable quicker recognition and response to new trends and situations, the value of your organization rises and becomes more measurable.
What’s the value of a better decision? How does Microsoft help your organization get there?
Functionality
Microsoft Business Intelligence applications provide the necessary functionality to accommodate the critical BI needs of your organization. Your organization has a spectrum of users who each have a variety of needs, for example:
· Executives – responsible for making informed business decisions
· Analysts – responsible for understanding the data and conveying information insights to others
· Engineers – responsible for product development
· Field Agents – responsible for engaging customers
Each user applies different levels of functionality depending upon the situation – each user is a power user for some things and a casual user for others. How do you provide an application that sufficiently meets the needs of all users through the same system?
Business Intelligence does not live within one application. When BI is successful, users are compelled to act on the new insights, to dig deeper, to collaborate, to input new information, to share documentation, to respond quickly.
The Microsoft Office System offers the most complete framework to accommodate all of these functions.
Integration
It is certainly necessary to provide a platform capable of bringing a variety of data sources together so they can be accessed through a unified application. The Microsoft Platform offers market leading tools for data integration.
BUT, in order to roll out a BI initiative throughout the entire organization, the applications must integrate with the way people work every day. How does your organization’s BI application enable employees to integrate their work with the enterprise so that they can demonstrate their performance and alignment with corporate objectives?
Business Intelligence activities – such as reviewing or updating reports, analyzing data, comparing trends – only comprise an aspect of the typical day, they don’t encompass all of our daily activities.
The Microsoft Platform is designed to comprehensively integrate Business Intelligence with all of the other key activities that we perform everyday to accomplish our tasks and meet our commitments, activities like email and collaboration, workflow, search, document management, and planning.
Economics
If it’s too expensive to equip all of your users with licenses, then you need to choose who to equip. By selecting one group of users to equip and leaving other users out, organizations create major ongoing issues, such as:
· Higher IT costs - those who you don’t equip compete with your organization’s IT strategy and infrastructure by pulling information into desktop databases and applications, by developing custom processes for their team or dept. that become entrenched and difficult to integrate into the enterprise; these types of deferred costs often increase exponentially for every user group left out.
· Opportunities missed – who will be responsible for your organization’s next innovation? which clients are being overlooked? which production issues could have been caught months earlier? will extensive reconciliation cycles lead to surprises effecting our bottom line or budgets?
· Reporting Treadmills – more time is spent organizing information than understanding it, requiring higher headcounts, data latency, greater risk of error.
· Operations don’t align with Strategies – employees become overwhelmed by what they need to do and completely unaware of why they do it and how they can improve their contribution.
Some analysts note that the typical large organization owns on average 6 different BI systems – and still, more than 70% of information workers don’t use BI systems. What does this tell you about the traditional BI economic model?
Microsoft has introduced a new economic model for Business Intelligence that delivers enterprise grade BI functionality and integration at a fraction of the cost of traditional BI vendors.
*** Note: the perspective provided above has been collected from a variety of BI-related resources and discussions, but the views expressed are mine and do not represent Microsoft’s official position.
Upcoming Events
IT Executive Roadmap Tour
covering Business Intelligence (BI), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Unified Communications (UC)
When: Jan 22 (Tue) @ 8:30am-12:30pm
Where: Winnipeg, MB
Click here to register
When: Jan 22 (Tue) @ 8:30am-12:30pm
Where: Victoria, BC
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When: Jan 24 (Thurs) @ 8:30am-12:30pm
Where: Vancouver, BC
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When: Jan 29 (Tue) @ 8:30am-12:30pm
Where: Calgary, AB
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When: Jan 31 (Thurs) @ 8:30am-12:30pm
Where: Edmonton, AB
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Performance Management Analytics – CFO Magazine Conference
When: Feb 3-5
Where: San Francisco, CA
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Find Events & Webcasts
Upcoming Webcasts
PerformancePoint Server Demo
Click here to register:
Dec 18 @ 11am PST
Jan 15 @ 11am PST
Jan 22 @ 11am PST
SQL Server Spatial Data: Delivering Locations Intelligence
Delivered by Neudesic
When: Dec 19 (Wed) @ 11am-12pm
Click here to register
Unlock the Business Intelligence Capabilities of SQL Server
When: Jan 9 (Wed) @ 11am PST
Click here to register:
http://www.microsoft.com/events/EventDetails.aspx?CMTYSvcSource=MSCOMMedia&Params=%7eCMTYDataSvcParams%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ID%22+Value%3d%221032361186%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ProviderID%22+Value%3d%22A6B43178-497C-4225-BA42-DF595171F04C%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22lang%22+Value%3d%22en%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22cr%22+Value%3d%22US%22%2f%5e%7esParams%5e%7e%2fsParams%5e%7e%2fCMTYDataSvcParams%5e
Driving Business Performance with Microsoft Business Intelligence
When: Jan 14 (Mon) @ 9:30am PST
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Customer and Product Monitoring with PerformancePoint Server 2007
When: Jan 29 (Tue) @ 11:30am PST
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Training
PerformancePoint Server 2007 Training Sites
PPS Planning, Monitoring and Analytics, online training includes videos and workbooks
BSM & ProClarity self-paced online training
Hitachi Consulting
Business Intelligence Education Services
Solid Quality Mentors
BI Courses, including SQL 2005, PPS and ProClarity
IT Mentors
Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Monitoring & Analytics
Premier Knowledge Solutions
ProClarity Training
SQL Server Training Courses
Online & Instructor led
Partner Program – webcasts
Business Intelligence Using PerformancePoint Server 2007 Business Modeling (Level 200)
ISV Web Seminar Series Part 1: PPS – Leveraging PerformancePoint in your BI Solution
ISV Web Seminar Series Part 2: PPS - Planning
ISV Web Seminar Series Part 3: PPS - Monitoring
Online Training Webcasts - (keyword = performancepoint)
Resources
Microsoft BI
Whitepapers
Demos
Product Evaluations
Channel 9: Business Intelligence Platform Overview
PerformancePoint Server 2007
System Requirements
Book: The Rational Guide to Monitoring and Analyzing with…
Book: The Rational Guide to Planning with…
Book: Business Intelligence with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (not released yet)
Book: Pro PerformancePoint Server 2007: Building Business Intelligence Solutions (not released yet)
Flash Demo: Virtual Experience
Datasheets: Overview, Monitor, Analyze, Plan, Management Reporting
Case Studies: Energizer, Oticon, Skanska, Gemplus, Capella, CompUSA
Webcast: Performance Management 101 with PerformancePoint Server 2007,
Webcast: Business Intelligence with Office PerformancePoint Server 2007
Webcast: Revenue Forecasting with PerformancePoint Server 2007
Video: PerformancePoint Server Team Video
Download PerformancePoint Server 2007 Evaluation Version (x86)
Download PerformancePoint Server 2007 Evaluation Version (x64)
Sample: Monitoring Data here
Sample: Planning Data here
Data Import Wizard for Microsoft Dynamics AX Tool here
Scorecard Migration Tool here
PPS Planning & Architecture Guide
PPS Deployment Guide
PPS Operations Guide
PPS Whitepapers
PPS Developer Portal
ProClarity
ProClarity Forum: discussion board for ProClarity technical questions
Search the Support Knowledge Base
Microsoft ProClarity Software Developer’s Kit 6.3
SQL Server 2005
Best Practices
SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence
BI Presentations
SQL Server 2005 – Learning Portal
Archived Webcasts, Virtual Labs and Podcasts
Microsoft SQL Server 2005: Scales to your growing business needs
Case Studies: Kelley Blue Book, National Aquarium, Barnes & Noble
Book: The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit: With SQL Server 2005…
Training: SQL Server 2005 Learning Paths
SQL Server 2008
Business Intelligence
Data Warehousing
Performance Improvements for MDX in AS 2008
SQL 2008 CTP, November 2007
November CTP quick review – by Vidas Matelis
Datasheet: Business Intelligence
Whitepaper: Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing
Training: SQL Server 2008 Learning Paths
Analysis Services
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services Step by Step
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (Paperback)
Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005… (Paperback)
Delivering Business Intelligence with… (Paperback)
Microsoft Technet Whitepapers
Whitepaper: Identifying and Resolving MDX Query Performance Bottlenecks in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services
SharePoint Server 2007
SharePoint Business Intelligence
Evaluation Guide
Data Mining
SQL Server Data Mining
Webcast: Building Adaptive Applications with SQL Server Data Mining
Video: SQL Server 2008 Data Mining Enhancements
Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics-Everyone Gets It
Evaluate Microsoft Dynamics—What is Microsoft Dynamics?
Whitepaper: Evaluating Financial Management Software…Is it time for a change?
Microsoft & BI Blogs
The Microsoft PerformancePoint Team Blog
Patrick Baumgartner’s Unofficial PPS Blog
Intelligent Insight on PerformancePoint – PerformancePoint Server
Adrian Downe’s Blog – Great 7 Part Series on PPS Planning Features!
Ian Tien’s Unofficial PerformancePoint Server and Business Scorecard Manager Blog
Microsoft BI Blog – by Patrick Husting
Nick Barclay’s BI Blog –PerformancePoint Server resources
Chris Webb’s BI Blog – MDXtreme Programming
Vidas Matelis BI Blog – SQL 2005 resources
Microsoft OLAP by Mosha Pasumansky – Deep Insights into SSAS & MDX
Prologika (Teo Lachev’s Weblog) – Reporting Services insights
Direct Reports (Brian Welcker’s Weblog) - Reporting Services
The Data Puzzle – Solving the Enterprise Data Puzzle with Microsoft BI
Microsoft BI Partners
http://www.microsoft.com/bi/partners/partners.aspx
OLAP Report - summaries
Preview of PerformancePoint Server 2007
Market share analysis
SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 (Microsoft)
What is OLAP?
Commentary: Business Intelligence Competency Centers
Dimensional Relational vs. OLAP: The Final Deployment Conundrum
Analyst Reports
AMR Research: Microsoft’s Looming Impact on the Business Intelligence and Performance Management Market
Forrester Report Detail BPM Growth and Market Leadership
Gartner Research: Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Coming Soon to a Desktop Near You
Business Intelligence Virtual Labs
Try out a business intelligence virtual lab to test out the technology stack, including:
· Analysis Services
· Excel 2007
· Business Scorecard Manager 2005 (BSM)
· ProClarity
· Report Builder
· Integration Services
· Data Mining
News Links & Press Releases
Is the newly-launched Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server suite the real deal?
Progressive Gaming to Introduce Casinolink® Enterprise Edition 3.0 at the 2007 Global Gaming Expo
Microsoft Readies SQL Server 2008
SAP Microsoft Duet has growing appeal for business users
Can You Answer These 3 Questions?
Gartner data warehouse DBMS Magic Quadrant 2007: New tools, old mantras
The Best Architecture for Business Intelligence
BI project management: Five must-have pieces of advice
Successful business intelligence secrets: BI front-end tools
Business Intelligence Roles and Responsibilities
The Road to Business-IT Alignment, Part 2
Business Intelligence and Data Delivery: Converging with SOA
High-Impact Business Intelligence Opportunities in the Financial Services Industry
Business Intelligence Consolidation Won’t Kill Innovation, Claim Execs
How Buying Changes in the New BI Landscape
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