Microsoft Business Intelligence Blog : News

How much time is lost looking for data and reports?

Patrick Husting — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Have you ever researched how much time is being lost looking for data and reports within your company or group? How much time is lost by an analyst looking for information? How many emails have to be sent asking for information? How many phone calls are made wondering where to look for the latest sales information? Ever get emails or calls from the bosses asking for the latest report or metric? The same questions are asked over and over againâ€¦

Think about itâ€¦

How much time do you spend searching through your MY DOCUMENTS to find a spreadsheet or report?
How much time do you spend searching through the company file share of spreadsheets that everyone is using?
How much time do you spend searching through all the SharePoint sub sites and document libraries looking for reports?
How much time do you spend searching through your emails trying to find the ones with attachments?
Once you find those emails, then you notice you have 3 emails with the same attachment, which is the latest?

30 minutes a day? 60 minutes a day? More!?

Salary: $50,000, Time Lost: 60 minutes a day = $6,312 lost a year in salaryâ€¦ WOW!

Do any of the current business intelligence companies provide solutions to these questions?

IBM to buy SPSS Inc. in $1.2 billion cash deal

Patrick Husting — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:37:28 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - IBM Corp. was in the acquisition frame of mind on Tuesday after it announced plans to acquire SPSS Inc. for about $1.2 billion as part of a broader foray into the market for business-analytics software.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ibm-to-buy-spss-inc-in-12-billion-cash-deal-2009-07-28

Inside Microsoft Business Intelligence, New URL and new focus

Patrick Husting — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:00:00 GMT

You may have noticed a lot of changes to our blog lately. We spent some time upgrading to the latest version of community server and you should be noticing a new look and more speed to the site. But we have a bigger focus nowâ€¦

We also have a new URL in http://www.InsideMSFTBI.com. We have this new URL because we are no longer focusing on Microsoft Performance Management software like PerformancePoint. We are going to focus on the ENTIRE Microsoft suite of business intelligence tools. We need to do this as there is just so much more than just focusing on one tool to do the job. We also chose www.InsideMSFTBI.com because we work live and work at Microsoft doing business intelligence projects in all the divisions, so we know a lot about what is coming in the near future from the respective product groups.

We will be focusing on the following software going forward

Excel 2007 and 2010
SharePoint Enterprise 2007 and 2010
PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint
Excel Services 2007 and 2010
SilverLight and Business Intelligence
PushBI by Extended Results (Desktop Monitoring and Mobile Business Intelligence)
SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 (SQL, SSIS, SSAS, MDS)
Gemini

Our major writing theme is called Personalized Business Intelligence. When we approach our business intelligence projects, we are focused on creating a Personalized Business Intelligence experience and this includes and means that we are going to use the RIGHT tool for the job. There is a lot of marketing going on with the big business intelligence vendors about â€œSelf-Serveâ€. That is kind of like putting, bear with me, Lipstick on a Pig. They are just packaging up the same solutions but calling it â€œSelf-Serveâ€. We do not really believe in that because we have been doing that with the different business intelligence tools for years and it only works some of the time. Really it is about taking those same tools and extending them so they work like the end-user works. That is the Key! But we will blog about that later.

As always, please feel free to send us a comment.

Enjoy the blog

Patrick Husting

WPC09, Day 4, Lights Out! Thunder storm!

Patrick Husting — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Well, we had our final day at the WPC09 conference. A big storm came up and it was thundering all around and then it just started to pour rain. After about 10 minutes of that, the lights went out in the Exhibit area and we were wondering... HURRICANE, well, it wasn't a hurricane as the lights came on about 5 minutes later, but it was pretty freaky!

There was an estimate of somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 people I heard on the first day of the event. That includes Microsoft people too. It feels like about 1,000+ came through our booth. It was non stop even during the session times when people where suppose to be in sessions. It was wonderful as we met people from all over the world and it was great hearing about their ISV solutions or business intelligence consulting projects they are on. Made a lot of new friends too.

As I wondered around, I ran into a couple more PerformancePoint people too.

Here is Rohit, he was in the PPS group for a couple years and now moved over to the Visio product, he gave me an excellent demo of Visio 2010 and I have to say.... NOW we have a reason to upgrade to the next version of Visio. It rocked!

This is Clay Williams, I feel bad as I met him once before about 2 or 3 months ago, knew the name but didn't remember the face. :o) Clay is focused on SharePoint BI Marketing and Partners.

WPC Day 3, It is all about BI

Patrick Husting — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:26:00 GMT

The conference is turning out to be beyond our expectations. We have had a ton of interest in our personalized business intelligence solution from all over the world. I think timing is right for a solution like ours as customers need it, other consulting companies are using it to land new BI business and ISVs want to white label it and put it into their LOB applications. Monday is going to be a very busy day for us as we do our follow ups.

There are some other BI solutions providers here like http://www.targit.com/ and http://www.strategycompanion.com. It is nice seeing other providers here because it gives others and option for solutions. This is the final day for me as I head home and boy do I look forward to it.

Posting a picture of one of my favorite Microsoft people Alyson Powell Erwin. She was holding down the PerformancePoint booth doing lots of presentations.

Day 2 at the Microsoft WPC 2009 Conference. Momentum!!

Patrick Husting — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:47:00 GMT

Well we are having a great time at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner conference here in New Orleans. Microsoft has been showing off some of the great new features coming in Windows 7 and Office 2010. They haven't shown any information on SharePoint or PerformancePoint. They are keeping it all quiet until the SharePoint conference in October. We are in the TAP program and spend a lot of time with the new SharePoint BI team so we have some great insight of all the new features in SharePoint. Going to be exciting. Running into a lot of my SharePoint BI friends at Microsoft, they are some of our best fans! They are great!

For this trip, most of our time is spent talking and showing our new mobile business intelligence application called PushBI (http://www.pushbi.com). The Windows Mobile group has been highlighting it solid for a couple days now and just driving a ton of customer, partner and ISV interest in using our solution. Have to admit, caught off guard on the interest. Pretty awesome.

We have companies interested hooking it to other non-Microsoft platforms like SAP, Oracle and other very interesting platforms. It is great seeing all the different ways our solution can be used. I know when we get back from the trip, we are going to be VERY busy doing follow up work.

Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2009, We are here!

Patrick Husting — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:00:00 GMT

We arrived on Sunday evening for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner conference in New Orleans. Microsoft launched its new branded partner program, finally gone is that pretty ugly site and now they have a nice fresh look. I look forward to all the changes they are making to the program. There are a lot of much needed changes coming. We are here because our PUSHBI solution is being shown in many sessions here focusing on Windows Mobile and Mobile Business Intelligence.

We have a booth and have had a pretty steady flow of interested partners that would like to do implementation services around our software sales. We sell the PUSHBI (http://pushbi.com) solution directly in the United States and we have a distributor in Europe, but we use partners to implement the solution outside the Pacific Northwest where we work and live. Great model and we get introduced to all these other great BI companies around the world. Great perk to the job. We even have had several ISVs stop by wanting to know how they can OEM our solution into their products so that they can have a desktop and mobile BI solution. Score! The following is a picture of our booth and Bryan our Partner manager.

We are back online with our Business Intelligence blog

Patrick Husting — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:29:00 GMT

Ok, that was a little bit painful as we upgraded our blog software. We had to upgrade to a middle version and then upgrade again, but we finally got there. What a pain. Anyway, we are going to have some big changes to our blog site in the coming month as we rebrand our business intelligence consulting company Extended Results along with our of our BI assets (products and services). We have been building some really amazing BI solutions t Microsoft and are going to be talking and slowing some of those solutions on this blog, so please check back in the future.

We are pretty fortunate that we work and live only a couple miles from the Microsoft campus so we tend to know a lot of people at Microsoft and the direction they are going to take their business intelligence solutions. So we are going to start a little bit of a different focus on our blog site to give you insight on where we believe Microsoft will be taking business intelligence over the next several years. We see a lot of exciting changes coming...

Unemployment Chart. Wow. Random Thoughts

Patrick Husting — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:57:00 GMT

Came across this chart this morning. A good bar chart will give you great perspectives on issues. May 2009 Unemployment Numbers for the United States. I would love to see other countries unemployment numbers. Remember, unemployment is a lagging number....

Nothing to do with BI - the Microsoft BING truck

Patrick Husting — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:49:00 GMT

Driving through the Redwest campus yesterday and saw the new BING truck. Funny...

PushBI Desktop and Windows Mobile - Personalized Business Intelligence

Patrick Husting — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:02:00 GMT

I haven't been doing much blogging lately; we are busy working on our business intelligence projects and are fortunate to have a full pipeline of BI projects (SQL, SSAS, SSRS, SPS, PPS and Silverlight). But, I truly believe if you are going to survive as a company, you either innovate or die.

With that said, we have been developing a new business intelligence tool called PushBI, our tool Personalizes Business Intelligence and fills a large gap in desktop monitoring tools along with a mobile business intelligence solution on the Microsoft platform. We had our first successful beta implementation at Microsoft and will roll it out to many other Microsoft groups over the next several months. We are in the process of a soft-launch and informational awareness effort in the United States. Check out our web site at www.PUSHBI.com for more information and download the trial of PushBI and let me know what you think. We are looking for implementation partners in the U.S. and Europe. If you are interested, or know someone who might be, visit our web site and contact us about the opportunities.

Below is a screen shot of the Windows Mobile version of the solution. PushBI also works on BlackBerry, iPhone and Android mobile devices too.

More posts to come on PushBI over the next couple weeks...

Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference Scheduled for 2010

Patrick Husting — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:41:00 GMT

http://www.microsoft.com/bi/

April 8, 2009
In 2009, Microsoft will deliver Business Intelligence content in more places than ever!
We will have significant presence at Tech Ed (May 2009, Los Angeles, CA), at Worldwide Partner Conference (July 2009, New Orleans, LA) the SharePoint Conference (October 2009, Las Vegas, NV) and SQL Server PASS (November 2009, Seattle, WA). The next Microsoft BI Conference will be held in Seattle, WA in October 2010.

Just call me Office 14 SharePoint PerformancePoint Services

Patrick Husting — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

special note: I had to take this entry down yesterday because I guess it wasn't pushed out to the press yet. Sorry PPS team. I guess it is live news today!

another note: I think these are all great changes, more small, mid and enterprise size customers will be able to get performance management and analytics tools within one SharePoint license.

Just read the press release on the changes coming to the PPS group. Monitoring and Analytics to be moved into the SharePoint group and be called PerformancePoint Services. That is good news. Planning is being discontinued. That is bad news. I guess they are putting their gets on SQL Gemini in 2010...

Microsoft External FAQ about the changes
Click link to read: EXTERNAL_Microsoft_BI_FAQ_Final

Summary of the annoucement
Based on customer feedback, Microsoft will consolidate PerformancePoint Server (PPS) with its scorecards, dashboards, and analytic capabilities into SharePoint as â€œPerformancePoint Servicesâ€ with the release of SharePoint 14 in late 2009. Microsoft will invest in these capabilities to enable customers to deliver performance management broadly to their information workerâ€™s and at a low TCO.

In mid CY2009, Microsoft will release PerformancePoint Server 2007 â€œService Pack 3â€ which will include updates to the current productâ€™s planning module. Thereafter, customers should not expect further investment in standalone versions of PerformancePoint Server.

Extended Analytics 2008 for use with QuickBooks

Patrick Husting — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:03:00 GMT

It has been a REALLY busy year at Extended Results our consulting company. We have had some tremendous growth in regards to customers and employees along with generating some new and interesting intellectual property. I have been using QuickBooks for years for my different companies and I found it to be a great program for managing my ERP needs on a small/mid scale. But this year with all the growth, we had a need for some business intelligence functionality to run the business better. Since there is nothing on the market for QuickBooks for BI, we decided to write it ourselves and start marketing it. It is called Extended Analytics 2008 and you can find out more at http://www.ExtendedAnalytics.com.

We just got it all approved through the QuickBooks licensing/developer program and have begun marketing it to QuickBooks ProAdvisors. We have been surpised with the response and purchases since the release. Very exciting. The solution is totally drag and drop and meant to be brain dead easy to use...

The following screenshot is an example of a Scorecard you can drag and drop right onto your dashboard along with some rich Dundas charts showing your revenue vs. expenses.

You can have multiple analytic charts that can be dragged and dropped into different zones.

Lots of screenshots and feature lists can be found at the product web site which can be visited at http://www.ExtendedAnalytics.com

More PPS M&A SP1 Features/Fixes

Patrick Husting — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:03:00 GMT

PerformancePoint Monitoring Server SP1 includes the following enhancements:

· Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008

· Add a default display condition report view (see related blog post)

· Multi-select Monitoring server filters passing to multi-select SQL Server Reporting Services report parameters

· Time Intelligence Post Filter formula date corrections

o In some instances filters were passing a one day offset, this is resolved

o Date format of filter will now honor localized formats

· Negative numbers will not cause a text wrap in scorecards

· Dashboard filter performance improvements

· Expand/collapse functions work properly with hidden parent KPI members

· Updated sample data file

· Tabular filter support

· Multi-select filters can now be passed to a Strategy Map report view

· Limit of 1,000 characters in an MDX expression for KPIs has been removed

Â· No longer blocked from using SQL Server 2008 as a data source (NOTE: full support for 2008 is coming in SP2, we just wonâ€™t prevent you from running on it with SP1)