How to use this template

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February 21, 2007. Call in at 1255 p.m. Eastern
Time
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Agenda

• Microsoft brings coherence to its BI front-end
  platform with Office 2007.
• Office 2007 helps data and people converge.
• The best BI benefits come with pairing Office
  2007 with other Microsoft technologies.
• Forrester recommendations.

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Agenda

• Microsoft brings coherence to its BI front-end
  platform with Office 2007.
• Office 2007 helps data and people converge.
• The best BI benefits come with pairing Office
  2007 with other Microsoft technologies.
• Forrester recommendations.

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Microsofts BI platform
Office 2007
Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook
SharePoint Server
PerformancePoint Server
Excel Services
Integration and BI infrastructure
SQL Server 2005
Reporting Services
Analysis Services
Integration Services
Data Sources
DB2
Oracle
Teradata
SAP
Other ODBC
SQL Server RDBMS
Other OLE DB
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Key areas of new BI support in Office 2007

• Excel desktop client
• Includes data mining add-ins
• Excel Services in SharePoint Server
• New PerformancePoint Server
• Integration of Reporting Services with SharePoint
• All management and administration now in
  SharePoint

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Surprise! Microsoft has always been a key BI
player

• Excel has been most popular BI tool for a decade
• Excel part of our culture (Word, browsers, etc.)
• Spreadsheets are omnipresent in the workplace
• Accepted way of adding value to scattered bits of
  information
• Flexible analysis, varying degrees of complexity
• Merger of structured and unstructured data
• Power users understand functionality intimately

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But business and IT disagree over Excel use

• IT wants users to migrate from Excel to real BI
  software.
• Reliable data sources
• Data item selection
• Formula consistency
• Long-term scalability
• The business always resists.
• Excel already incorporated into workflow
• Dont want to lose ability for rapid response to
  business events
• Fear that new BI software will take away control
  over how I do my job
• Reaching common ground over Excel has been a
  hallmark of successful BI initiatives.

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Excel Services will help ease ITs concerns

• Repository in SharePoint for spreadsheets and
  data source connections
• Storage
• Server-side calculation of spreadsheets
• Basic workflow check in/out, sharing, auditing,
  access permissions
• Web interface available to access any stored
  spreadsheet
• Exposes spreadsheets to dashboards/portals
• Gives users the opportunity to
• Maintain a single master version of important
  spreadsheets
• Establish approved data items and data sources
• Reduce overall spreadsheet proliferation

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Excel desktop client improves user experience

• Greater capacity 1 million rows by 16,000
  columns
• Tighter integration with Analysis Services
• Metadata layer for business-friendly data item
  selection
• New environment for KPI definition
• Displayed KPIs appear automatically as
  conditional formulas
• Formatting inherited from Analysis Services
• Data sources available directly through formulas
• Formulas can access SQL Server-based data mining
  algorithms
• BI features (including new chart types) exposed
  through ribbons
• Two data mining add-ins from Analysis Services
• Automated discovery for users with ordinary
  technology expertise
• Detailed use for data mining experts

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PerformancePoint focuses on planning

• Combines Business Scorecard Manager,
  functionality from ProClarity acquisition, and
  new technology for planning
• Targets performance management use cases
• Monitoring
• Analytics
• Planning
• Templates for domain-knowledge verticals
• Self-contained data repository plus front-end
  application (for planning, forecasting, and
  budgeting)
• Users develop models applied throughout the
  PerformancePoint life cycle
• Technology layer can be applied in general use
  cases too
• Dashboards surfaced through SharePoint,
  information also through Excel and Outlook

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SharePoint is now integrated into Reporting
Services

• SharePoint is new center for management and
  administration of Report Services
• Creation of reports still in its own interface
• Reporting Services now inherits the security and
  access control found in SharePoint
• Introduced with SQL Server 2005 SP2

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Agenda

• Microsoft brings coherence to its BI front-end
  platform with Office 2007.
• Office 2007 helps data and people converge.
• The best BI benefits come with pairing Office
  2007 with other Microsoft technologies.
• Forrester recommendations.

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Data disassociated from the process hierarchy
CxO
VP marketing
VP finance
Customer service manager
Product manager
Controller
Accountant
F
inan
c
e domain
P
r
odu
c
t domain
Data
Cubes
ERP
CRM
Financial
w
a
r
ehouse
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Decision categories
Decision-making timeline
Decision- value timeline
Number ofdecision- makers
Number of decisions
Businessdomains
Stratum
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Microsoft wants to bring BI to the masses
More aggregated
More senior
Cubes
Datawarehouse
Budgeting
CRM
ERP
Data
People
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Microsoft wants to bring BI to the masses
More aggregated
More senior
Traditional BI vendors
Cubes
Datawarehouse
Budgeting
CRM
ERP
Data
People
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Microsoft wants to bring BI to the masses
More aggregated
More senior
Microsoft
Cubes
Datawarehouse
Budgeting
CRM
ERP
Data
People
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Agenda

• Microsoft brings coherence to its BI front-end
  platform with Office 2007.
• Office 2007 helps data and people converge.
• The best BI benefits come with pairing Office
  2007 with other Microsoft technologies.
• Forrester recommendations.

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Office 2007 BI is best with an all-Microsoft stack

• Allows for more user self-service, where users
  dont have to code or understand database schemas
• Excel Services gives users the chance to
  rationalize their use of Excel if they want to
  take the chance
• Some presentation layer benefits are only
  available with certain pieces of the Microsoft
  stack
• The business user-friendly item selection
  available through Analysis Services isnt
  available for Reporting Services.
• Only SQL Servers data mining algorithms are
  easily available in Excel.
• Still not a full featured BI environment like
  Business Objects or Cognos, for example
• But not all organizations need every single bell
  and whistle.

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Agenda

• Microsoft brings coherence to its BI front-end
  platform with Office 2007.
• Office 2007 helps data and people converge.
• The best BI benefits come with pairing Office
  2007 with other Microsoft technologies.
• Forrester recommendations.

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Recommendations

• Include Microsoft BI in POCs. For SQL Server
  environments, plan for increasing investment in
  Microsoft BI. With other database environments,
  the pure plays will remain dominant for the time
  being.
• Dont underestimate the potential of Excel
  Services. Introduce it first for the largest
  spreadsheets requiring frequent updates of
  structured information from enterprise data
  sources.
• Set expectations for the differences between
  reports and cubes. Some of Excels improvements
  for Analysis Services cubes arent available for
  standard reports. Ensure that business users
  understand how their experience will differ in
  the two scenarios.

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Thank you
J. Paul Kirby pkirby_at_forrester.com www.forrester.c
om