Microsoft’s big BI push

Overall, Kilimanjaro is Microsoft’s attempt to bolster its presence and visibility in the end-user BI market, move up the business value chain and bring Microsoft one step closer to delivering on its promise of ‘BI for the masses’. Will it succeed? We believe if Microsoft can get its timing and pricing right then other BI vendors have a lot to be worried about.

Climbing Kilimanjaro is a tough challenge

Understanding the different components within Kilimanjaro is a challenge itself, much like climbing the mountain from which the project takes its name. Despite market confusion, Kilimanjaro does not equate to the next version of SQL Server but does in fact relate to a number of features and functionality included in the next release of SQL Server 2008 that will make the platform more scalable and help it appeal to a wider pool of business users.

There are three different project names to get your head around. Firstly, the company has introduced self-service reporting capabilities within the next release of Microsoft SQL Server – codenamed Kilimanjaro. Secondly, it has announced new managed self-service analysis capabilities – codenamed Project Gemini. And finally, the company aims to deliver advanced data warehousing functionality within SQL Server under the project codenamed Madison.

Gemini is Microsoft’s BI power-user play

Project Gemini – believed by many to be the standout announcement at the conference – constitutes a number of different client and server BI components. It has three main elements: an update to the Analysis Services engine; an Excel add-in client component for in-memory, on-the-fly sorting, filtering and slicing & dicing of large data sets; and deeper integration with Sharepoint.

Project Gemini is clearly targeted at the power users that require the familiarity of Excel but with the scale and power of a heavy-duty multidimensional tool – SQL Server Analysis Services. Excel plays a front and centre part in Microsoft’s ‘bring BI to the masses’ strategy; the Excel add-in component, for example, has been designed to overcome some of the technical limits to crunching data within Excel, and allows users to download millions of rows of data from disparate sources and present and compare data within its interface.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

• Email
• Print
• Share
  • Slashdot
  • Digg
  • Stumble
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine