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Microsoft
Builds Business Intelligence Into Office Software
Building on the robust business intelligence (BI)
platform capabilities provided by Microsoft (R) SQL
Server (TM), Microsoft Corp. announced it has significantly
increased and broadened its investment in BI, with Microsoft
Office products playing a major role. The goal is to provide
a better experience when users access and work with business
information from within the suite of applications they
already use to work, collaborate and manage their business
-- Microsoft Office.
Decision-makers at all levels within an organization can use
these new capabilities to help drive improved business
performance. In support of this strategy, Microsoft
will announce that a new business performance
management server application, Microsoft Office
Business Scorecard Manager 2005, will be available in
November. The company also will showcase technologies that
will be included in the next release of Microsoft Office
products, code-named Microsoft Office "12," that are
designed to help information workers easily find, analyze
and more securely share business information within the
Microsoft Office System, leading to faster and more informed
decisions.
"One way to increase the impact that people can have in an
organization is to give them access to the information they
need," said Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business
Division, who will detail today's announcement during a
Microsoft Office Live Meeting Web conference. "Until now, BI
software has been too complex, costly and disconnected from
the software tools people use every day to do their jobs.
But the investments we're making in Microsoft Office, from
significant extensions in existing products such as Office
Excel (R) and SharePoint (R) Products and Technologies, to
new server investments such as the Office Business Scorecard
Manager, will make BI and the business insights gleaned from
it more pervasive, thereby enhancing the impact of people
throughout an organization, which leads to greater overall
business success."
Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005
Availability
Available Nov. 1, Microsoft Office Business Scorecard
Manager 2005 is a new, server-based business scorecarding
application. It takes advantage of the power of the
Microsoft Office System and extends the SQL Server platform
to help organizations broadly deploy personalized scorecards
to employees so they can track key performance
indicators (KPIs) against goals - all within an
intuitive and collaborative environment. Business Scorecard
Manager 2005 helps businesses align people and their actions
with strategy, allowing scorecard users to access structured
and unstructured information when analyzing performance
issues, as well as collaboratively shape and execute
solutions.
"We're pleased that Microsoft has embraced our approach to
strategic performance management," said Dr. David P. Norton,
co-creator of the Balanced Scorecard framework and president
of Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, a Palladium company,
based in Lincoln, Mass. "Microsoft's Business Scorecard
Manager will help bring the benefits of the Strategy-Focused
Organization to many more companies. Balanced Scorecard
Collaborative is pleased to continue working with Microsoft
to help knowledge workers translate strategic objectives
into action."
Business Intelligence: A Key Area of Investment
Microsoft Office
"12" will simplify the process of accessing and working with
business information. Today the company unveiled the
following BI capabilities that will be delivered by Office
"12" Excel and Office "12" SharePoint Products and
Technologies, both of which integrate with SQL Server 2005:
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Microsoft
Office "12" Excel. In Office "12," Excel, which has long
been a favorite tool for analyzing information, becomes
a powerful BI tool for more securely accessing,
analyzing and sharing information from data warehouses
and enterprise applications. Office "12" Excel enables
people to connect to enterprise data easily and maintain
a persistent connection between their Excel spreadsheet
and the data source -- making it simple to update to
Excel spreadsheets and drill down to the next level of
detail inside the individual spreadsheet. New features
include complete support for SQL Server 2005 Analysis
Services, greatly expanded spreadsheet capacity,
improved sorting and filtering capabilities, rich data
visualization schemes, and enhanced PivotTables and
PivotCharts.
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Microsoft
Office "12" SharePoint Products and Technologies. In
Office "12," the SharePoint Products and Technologies
become a comprehensive portal for all of the BI content
and end-user capabilities in SQL Server Reporting
Services and Microsoft Office "12," providing
security-enhanced access to business information in one
place. New server-side Excel capabilities, called Excel
Services, will allow customers to more effectively
secure, share and manage spreadsheets on the server and
allow them to be viewed via a Web browser or downloaded
to the desktop. The next generation of SharePoint
Products and Technologies will make it easy to build
personalized dashboards that combine data and charts
from several sources (without writing code) and to find
key reports, KPIs and spreadsheets via improved search
capabilities.
These
improvements deliver increased value to Office users, and
they also mark a shift in the delivery and use of BI
solutions. Where BI has previously been an individual
activity, its integration into Office introduces new
collaboration scenarios. Where BI has previously lived
outside of business processes, it can now be a part of all
the processes (structured and unstructured) that occur in
Office. This integration can increase the overall value of
BI by more closely aligning business information with
decision-making and action.
"Although the BI market has experienced a 17 percent
compound annual growth rate over the last 10 years, to reach
$4.3 billion in worldwide software revenue, the vendors'
primary focus has been on analysts and power users," said
Dan Vesset, research director, Analytics and Data
Warehousing, IDC. "During this period, Excel has remained
the most widely used end-user tool for BI, but it has lacked
the control needed for supporting enterprise- class
decision-making and compliance processes. By integrating new
BI functionality into Office and ensuring Office
connectivity to the SQL Server platform, Microsoft has the
potential to both broaden the use of BI by business users
and provide IT staff with greater control over deployment
and maintenance of the BI platform."
These new Office technologies build on the BI platform
capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server. Microsoft will launch
the next version of its SQL Server database, SQL Server 2005
(along with Visual Studio (R) 2005 and BizTalk (R) Server
2006) on Nov. 7 in San Francisco. Together these products
lay the foundation for Microsoft BI by providing advanced
data integration, data warehousing, data analysis and
enterprise reporting capabilities. Microsoft has also
invested significantly in a broad set of connectors to
packaged enterprise applications, which will help ensure
interoperability in heterogeneous environments and speed the
deployment of BI projects. In addition, the Microsoft Office
Business Applications group will continue to invest in
building a portfolio of BI applications.
Source: Microsoft
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