Microsoft Business Intelligence

Editor's Notes

• #3: If you consider our vision and you look at where we are at….we have some work to do.It is commonly thought that fewer than 20% of the users in the organizations we serve together have access to the BI tools and data they need to be most effective in their every day decision making. Fewer than 20%. You can leverage the sound data foundation you’ve built on Microsoft SQL Serverto bring greater agility to everyday decision making in your organizations, and to do it by empowering them to build on what they already know- Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft SharePoint Server
• #8: In the past, we might have thought of That Guy as the enemy. That Guy as the one who proliferated spreadmarts and data sprawl in our organizations.That guy is Domain expertUnderstands data workMad skills in ExcelHe – or she – is the go-to-guy for many information workers.And most importantly, the number of people who are ‘That Guy’ is increasing over time
• #9: And there are some 500 Million information workers for whom That Guy is a potential hero.In the past, we’ve railed against That Guy and those like him whoCobble together their own solutions,Deploy them via email or sneaker net, And proliferate stale and decaying copies of corporate data. We’ve banned Those Guys. We’ve taken away their data access. We’ve ignored them hoping they’ll go away.Thank goodness only 4% of business users are like That Guy.But in this case, 20% of 500 M is actually a pretty powerful workforce.It’s time to try get That Guy, That Gal and all like them working with us toward a common goal. ….so how do we do that ….lets start by making that guy part of the solution and that introduces us to the idea of Managed Self Service BI Embracing excel, not …well lets start by looking at the tools that that guy uses
• #10: These familiar tools enable great new experiences for the IT Professional and the Information Worker. Information workers get greater agility, and are able to rapidly build and share BI solutions to aid in their everyday, ad-hoc decision making. IT Professionals and BI Practitioners get Oversight to better control what and how data is shared, and Insight into how long and by whom these former underground BI solutions get used.We recently retired the “Gemini” code name and unveiled Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Exceland Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint.We’re going to spend the next several minutes diving deeper into the underpinnings of PowerPivotwith the principle architect of its enabling technologies and underlying engine. An engine we call VertiPaq.Please join me in welcoming to the stage, Microsoft’s Distinguished Engineer focusing on Business Intelligence, Amir Netz. Amir…
• #12: Hence our significant focus in SQL Server 2008 R2 on what we call Managed Self-Service BI.Self-service because we leverage a powerful new in-memory BI engine to give the power-user a better experience working with data of any size and scale. Managed becauseWe integrated all these new innovations in Excel, SharePoint and Analysis Services. The tools you already know and employ as part of your Information infrastructure.
• #13: 1. Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC):Company Background Info: Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) is the second largest container ship line in the world. MSC is also an existing SQL Server customer managing 22 Terabytes of data on SQL Server 2008. (existing MSC case study: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000003470 )Business Problem: Wanted to use publically available data from the US customs to benchmark themselves against other shipping companies in the market. Business users have never been able to grab all this public data into a single location. Solution:PowerPivot allowed them to pull the public data that they wanted for the time period that they needed. The ability to pull from multiple data sources enabled them to align this data into a format that they could easily analyze and build a meaningful report in a short period of time. (Market and Customer share in TEUs – Twenty foot equivalent units)Technology Highlights:Working with large amounts of data i.e .Leveraging 33 million rows of data, equivalent to 1.7GB of compressed data.Rapid time to solution: It took only 3 hours to pull the solution together. 2. CareGroup Healthcare System:Company Background Info: Based in Boston, CareGroup is the corporate parent of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, and three other area hospitals. CareGroup upgraded to SQL Server 2008 to take advantage of new features including advanced auditing and transparent encryption to help it meet HIPAA and other regulatory requirements. CareGroup Healthcare System is responsible for protecting the privacy and integrity of 2 terabytes of patient information and related data. Existing CareGroup case studies: 2009 - http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000003892 2007 - http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000001003Business Problem:CareGroup and its hospitals needs to proactively protect patient data and meet HIPAA compliance. Needed to obtain data from a very heterogeneous healthcare IT environment and wanted to understand what users were doing to proactively ensure user privacy.Solution: CareGroup Healthcare created this report to understand how people (physicians, nurses, medical staff) are using and accessing patient data. Audit Dashboard: Spots trends in healthcare data usage by department, database, and class type; as well as overall monthly trends (note the dip from 2008 to 2009)Technology Highlights:Merge corporate and unofficial data: Merges SQL Healthcare Audit data with business logic and metadata stored in spreadsheets and other systems. Source was 20GB of data, the workbook was only 1.5MB and it took them only a week to create the solution. PowerPivot allowed them to pull in all of the data in a short amount of time.  More importantly, used Excel as a tool to experiment and prototype different report formats and metrics to get to the desired set of reports.  Because all of the data was in one work book, was also able to create a map to identify source location for the events.
• #14: 3. Bank of New Zealand (BNZ)Company Background Info: Bank of New Zealand operates alongside one million New Zealanders, helping them to achieve their financial goals. BNZ focuses on being a total provider of specialized financial services with products including loans, investments, retirement savings, insurance (life, general, health, travel) and private banking.   Business Problem:BMZ’s month end reconciliations between General Ledger and Profit & Loss are manual and expected variances not well defined. Fee process requires reconciliation between two sources (2.6mil rows per month to 1,600 aggregated rows per month). No accurate mapping process between the two Fee Hierarchies GL and PnL) and they have two Organisation Hierarchies (Cost centre and Profit Centre). BNZ needs to provide some visualization of the relationship mappings of PnL Fee Type to GL and need one environment for querying and analyzing data .Solution:BNZ used the extensive mapping capabilities of PowerPivot to pull the PnL and GL data together onto a single excel document with ~5 worksheets and 7 PowerPivot datasets. The tabular based layout in excel and new formatting capabilities allowed for an easy visualization of the PnL and GL fees side by side. The excel slicers by Cost Center, Profit Center & Time allow for easy navigation and interaction with the mapped data.Technology Highlights:Built a fairly complex app involving large volumes of data and extensive relationship mapping in PowerPivot. PnL data is 2m rows / month from a DW and GL Data is 1,500 rows / month from SAP.
• #15: Point of Slide: Introduce SharePoint 2010 as an all-up platform that can enable BI 2.0 and address the challenges highlighted earlierAnimation: N/ANotes: Microsoft SharePoint 2010is a business-productivity platform that empowers all users to collaborate, discover, and manage their aspect of the business with the right information by using the familiar tools to create and share information without involving IT, and manage, drive and define organizational success by aligning to key metrics and strategy utilizing an extensible, trusted, and secure platform. But how does SharePoint 2010 address the challenges we’ve just discussed from a BI perspective?
• #17: Non-NDA slide
• #20: SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse is a data warehouse appliance that offers massive scalability at low cost.[Click to reveal components of SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse]SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse is built on the MPP technology acquired with Datallegro, and is provided as an appliance running SQL Server on Windows Server, with standard hardware components from a number of hardware vendors – HP, IBM, Dell, Bull, and EMC. This provides a balanced solution consisting of software and hardware working together.SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse will support data warehouses that store 100’s of terabytes, and beyond into the petabyte range while offering a low total cost of ownership, previously unseen at this end of the market.SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse will empower business by providing enterprise class performance and the flexibility of a hub and spoke architecture that enables organizations to implement a data warehouse and data mart ecosystem that meets their needs.
• #22: Point of the Slide: To show a bit more detail on how we think of the BI architecture in 3 main layers.Flow of the Slide: A trusted BI platform is critical for a business intelligence solution to work today. If we’re going to achieve the promise of BI, we need to have the confidence and trust in the data, we need to know where it came from, and that it is both timely and reliable for us to use to make a decision. That’s where the power of an integrated BI platform like SQL Server comes into play.Once you have the data ready to use, the middle tier comes into play, where business users actually interact with the data and turn it into something that is useful to them to make the right decision. The numbers that we pull from other systems are just that—we need applications and content to turn them into actionable items—and that’s where the middle tier comes into play. Finally, we need the right tools and applications to ensure that we can use that data in the way we want to in order to make our decisions. Applications and tools that range from personal, to team, to organizational and corporate tools, all with a familiar look and feel, all integrated and working with my Operating system, email, Internet search function. And this is what the power of integration through Microsoft Office brings you. From the Office productivity tools like Excel, through to the team and collaboration tools of SharePoint. By integrating BI seamlessly into a broader business productivity suite that includes search, collaboration, unified communications, and content management, we offer the end user a much richer experience. Soundbite: With other BI solutions, you need 3-4-6-10 different products, footprints, and integration points. In our BI solution, we look three main layers of data and information that you need—all within the Office and SQL Server families: The data infrastructure and BI platform; the middle tier, where the business user comes into play, and the individual layer—where you and I use the data to make decisions.