Written by Ashvini Sharma, Principal Program Manager Lead, Microsoft Corp.<\/p>\n
SQL Server 2008 R2 empowers business users to create and share rich, compelling BI solutions through familiar tools such as Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010. While we\u2019ve mentioned PowerPivot in the past, this post describes the overarching themes.<\/p>\n
Self Service Business Intelligence<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n The goal of Business Intelligence is to empower users at all levels of an organization to make better, more relevant decisions. However, BI projects frequently require professional expertise, take significant time to deliver results, demand use of specialized tools, restrict how users work with their data, and can be prohibitively expensive. As such, there is a large gap between the benefits businesses derive from BI today and the potential impact it could have.<\/p>\n Self Service BI provides business users sophisticated BI capabilities by embracing how they work today: using common concepts and flexible approaches, in familiar tools, without large dependence on IT. PowerPivot for Excel 2010, for example, allows enables Excel power users to easily integrate data from multiple sources, interactively model, and analyze large amount of data from within Excel.<\/p>\n Besides enabling quick sharing of these solutions with others within the organization, PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010 allows business users to schedule data refreshes so that up to date data is available without manual intervention, leveraging resources of the SharePoint farm. In addition, any client application that can communicate with Analysis Services can also consume PowerPivot data using PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010, enabling organizations to leverage their investments in Microsoft BI.<\/p>\n Managed Self Service Business Intelligence<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n Providing Self Service BI capability to business users is only half the story. With SQL Server 2008 R2, IT can actively empower a broader set of users to derive more value from their data, while reducing overall cost to the organization, and gaining more visibility into how data is used within the organization. SQL Server 2008 R2 provides:<\/p>\n A dashboard integrated with the SharePoint Central Administration provides overview of hardware utilization and metrics such as query performance. <\/p>\n In addition, PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010 automatically loads and unloads PowerPivot databases on the SharePoint farm, optimizing resource utilization based on activity without active IT intervention.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n