BI Tools - Microsoft beating the BI market

Today I finally received an e-mail from Microsoft announcing the release of the CTP version (Community Technology Preview) for SQL 2008 R2 ... and I'm really excited to take the first look and for sure tomorrow I’ll download it ... I'm still focused on my master thesis, any way I will try to "play" a little this release and give a little feedback to you.

I truly believe that today Microsoft made a big step to beat all the competitors. Microsoft doesn’t have several decades of proved work, but has few years that are being improving and investing a lot in the Business Intelligence “world”

But why as an independent BI consultant I believe in Microsoft?

1. Because Is open to the communities/and world in spite of almost other players that they follow a strategy to hide all information and knowledge from their products

2. Because Is a buyer in the market… Examples are the acquisitions of Datallegro, ProClarity, Mobicomp (mobile), Zoomix (data quality), Teradata… and for example partnerships with Dundas, Panorama…

3. Because in a near future BI will be for all users (to the masses) and not only for a few group of decision makers. Today BI is spread in all organization for operational, tactical and strategy areas. Nothing better than improve the capabilities of an existent product in the market that everybody knows what it is, and what it does… simple EXCEL.

4. Because almost the players (SAP, SAS, Microstrategy…) in the BI market provide very expensive tools that are not possible nowadays… Some years ago they could set these expensive costs, because in that time these tools could provide competitive advantage… today even open source solutions are available in BI…

Last decades this BI players was trying to convince the end users and decision makers that they need new applications/interfaces to analyze, monitor and plan their business, but they were wrong, and mainly because Microsoft enter few years ago in this market. The end users and decision makers doesn’t want to know what is behind excel… only wants to see their KPIs no monitor, analyze, plan and control their business in their preferred tool… EXCEL.

In the coming weeks Microsft will also launch CTPs in the Project Gemini (Excel and Sharepoint) and in the Project Madison (massively scalable data warehousing).

BI Technical Papers Step-By-Step

As you may already noticed, I’ve started this blog (two years ago) with several practice issues, and when I started my BI master degree (also two years ago) I realized that the theory and the concepts are fundamental to have enough capabilities to face all the issues independently of the tools you are using. I’m a practice and theoretical person and just because I think that one depends on the other. It’s difficult? Yes it is, but for me is the single way to understand and align each one.

And for not fill this blog too much, I decided to publish more technical and practice posts at the Business Intelligence community that I’m co-founder with several other BI professionals. These technical posts will be created and published in www.BIResort.net in a format Step-By-Step paper in order to help better not also the more technical persons, but also those persons that are starting to work in this amazing world of Business Intelligence.

I’ll focus in several key areas, but for now I only made three papers in SSIS/ETL area. I’ll start on areas like SSAS/OLAP, SSRS, EXCEL 2010, and others… follow this post through the link in the right bar.

Follow all the papers from this link:

http://biresort.net/blogs/pedrocgd/archive/tags/StepByStep/default.aspx

And you can also directly download each paper from here:

SSIS Area

StepByStep - SSIS Moving huge amount of files

StepByStep - SSIS Using Package Configurations

StepByStep - SSIS Extract data from multiple Excel worksheets

I hope I can help you!

BI Education - BI Graduations in Portugal

Today I will talk about two universities that marked me a lot and currently are betting strong in the Business Intelligence area... These two universities are located in two different cities and separated by 300 km between Porto (North) and Lisbon (South). The reason for this post is not only because they are the main universities in Portugal going in deep Business Intelligence area, but also the contribution they gave me all my life since 1995.

I have great affection towards these two institutions, both have a very important role in my personal and professional development. At “Universidade Portucalense” (UPT) I finished my degree in 2001 while in the “Instituto Universitario de Lisboa” (ISCTE-IUL) I am currently finishing my dissertation included in my master BI degree began in 2007.

UPT – Universidade Portucalense

The UPT prepared me for life with its entire rigor, exigency and the indescribable quality of the teachers. In this University nothing failed ... everything worked ... I dare to say that this university has the better organization and installations.
I was at the age of responses to WHY… Why I need to study? Why I need to learn some contents? Why…Why…?

ISCTE-IUL – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa

The ISCTE-IUL helped me to improve my skills and to be more organized, more focused on the benefits and objectives to be achieved. Also helped me to understand the others and myself.

I was at the age of responses to HOW… How can I be a better Professional? How can I do the things more efficiently? How…? How…?

In UPT time the contact to the teachers was very difficult… otherwise today you can catch them by email or by mobile… It’s the evolution… The old and current students should be proud of these two universities that after so many years are still here helping us to be better professionals.

If you want to improve your competencies or start a new path, the registrations for business intelligence graduations are open. Visit the universities websites:

BI Conference - SQL Bits & Tech-Ed Europe 2009

Just to let you all know that some interesting events are coming… and the dates for the two events that I’m currently writing are... next November 2009.

SQLBits (19-21 November 2009)

Thursday 19th Pre-conference Training Day

Friday 20th SQL 2008 & R2 Conference Day

Saturday 21st Free Community Conference

“This is the biggest event yet, with 3 days of top quality SQL Server content. It starts with the pre-conference training day on Thursday 19th, more details coming soon. We have had a lot of feedback about weekday versus weekend during previous events so this time we have added a paid conference day on the Friday 20th, with a SQL 2008 and R2 theme. Finally we have the free Saturday community day, with speakers from around the world covering all manner of SQL Server topics.” By SQLBits

Tech-Ed 2009 Europe/Berlin (9-13 November 2009)

Business Intelligence Track

“Now more than ever, your business needs a quick means of getting the right information to the right people so that they can make smarter, more informed decisions. Microsoft’s Business Intelligence solutions enable you to do just this. The Business Intelligence track offers sessions covering how to integrate, analyse, and report on all of your corporate data easily using the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform, end-user tools, and analytics applications. Learn how to build custom, robust Business Intelligence solutions using Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005 and 2008 (Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services), Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007 (Monitoring, Analysis, and Planning) and the 2007 Microsoft® Office system (Microsoft® Office Excel®, Excel Services, and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server technologies) and how to easily manage them” by Microsoft

I’ll try to be in the both events. If you are thinking to attend one of these events, let me know to organize the trip or to meet you there!

TDWI - The importance of BI Standards

As you have noticed from previous posts, I appreciate a lot all the work that is being doing by TDWI ... not only for their great organization but also for its importance in the creation of standards that everyone can follow and speak the same "language". As I have already said earlier, I am currently preparing for the global certification of TDWI Business Intelligence in Germany ... when I feel prepared I take a flight and go to Germany and make the exams… of course with my princess because Business Intelligence only makes sense to me with the unconditional support of my princess Joana.

But not moving too much from the main reason of this post, I want to share with you some interesting posters from TDWI that you should print. Attention… follow this mind map or other posters from TDWI but not be a fundamentalist… you don’t need to follow all this approaches in details, because each project is different and the requirements as well.

TDWI's BI Usability poster visualizes all the elements that contribute to making a BI solution "usable." The mind map clusters the attributes into four categories, each of which has multiple branches that support related attributes. The four categories of usability are: Change Management, Architecture, Support and Analysis/Design.

The poster also depicts the dynamics of BI growth and decline using a model from systems theory. The model shows that usability is one of several key leverage points that BI managers can use to alter systems dynamics and move a program from a negative reinforcing loop to a positive one.

Request your free copy

Also take a look to other posters from TDWI:

Master Data Management

Business Intelligence Maturity Model

Regards,

Pedro

Two Years Blogging - Thank you!

Passed two years and two months and this blog is still alive! The tendency is always to grow following my ambition and motivation on Business Intelligence area. Thanks to my familly, to my fantastic girlfriend that always supported me, and to all the persons that directly or indirectly stimulated and keeping the blog alive with comments and suggestions.

My option to write this blog in English, following Google analytics dashboard, confirm that it was a fantastic decision, because most visitors are coming from outside Portugal

This place will continue to be a meeting point for all those persons that has the same passion as me for Business Intelligence. Some more technical post will be on www.BIResort.net community that I’m co-founder.

Thank you!

BI Future - Microsoft Surface Demos

The post today is not much to write ... images and videos of the attached links, speak for themselves ... is a future increasingly close to the present that I want to have the pleasure of being alive to watch it! Microsoft Surface ... really promises because is a tool that will make the difference in the near future ... today, is still quite expensive to have the opportunity to try this tool, but I’ll be waiting to watch it in the first seat.

Watch the following videos ... the previous is obligatory... do not lose the opportunity to see what awaits us...

In leisure...


In the Ellit Model Management... and in a bookstore object recognition...


In patient consultation... and in Super Bowl security...

The future promisses...

BI News - Data Mining for Terrorists Is Urged

I found an interesting article that I want to share with you about Data Mining.

The article was Published at "The New York Times" on October 7, 2008 by Eric Lichtblau

WASHINGTON — "A federal panel of policy makers and scientific experts urged a government-wide evaluation Tuesday of programs that sift through databases looking for clues on terrorism, to determine whether the programs are effective and legal. The federal government has made aggressive use of so-called data-mining tools since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as counterterrorism officials in many intelligence agencies have sought to analyze records on travel habits, calling patterns, e-mail use, financial transactions and other data to pinpoint possible terrorist activity.

The National Security Agency’s program for wiretapping terror suspects without warrants, the screening of suspicious airline passengers and the Pentagon’s ill-fated Total Information Awareness program, shut down by Congress in 2003 because of privacy concerns, have all relied on aspects of data mining.

But in a 352-page government study released on Tuesday, a committee of the National Research Council warned that successfully using these tools to deter terrorism “will be extremely difficult to achieve” because of legal, technological and logistical problems. It said a haphazard approach to using such tools threatened both Americans’ privacy rights and the country’s legitimate national security needs.

Mining through data patterns has been shown to work in commercial settings to predict what kind of toothpaste people may buy and what kind of movie they are likely to rent, or to detect casino card-counters or those engaged in credit card fraud.

But there is little evidence to confirm that the techniques work to actually find terrorists, despite the growing use in the last seven years, committee members said. Part of the problem, they said, is that the sample of known terrorists and actual attacks is so small that it is difficult to establish patterns of suspicious behavior.

The push to accumulate enormous amounts of information has also produced the risk of “a huge number of false leads” that could implicate people with no actual connections to terrorism, the committee said.

“More data does not mean better data,” said William J. Perry, the former defense secretary who was co-chairman of the panel, with Charles M. Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering. "

Read entire article here

BI Conference - Tech Ed 2009, SQL Server 2008 R2

Last year Microsoft shared information about Kilimanjaro at the company’s second annual Business Intelligence Conference, which kicked off on October 6 in Seattle. Kilimanjaro is set to include self-service analysis tools (codenamed “Gemini”) that Microsoft is saying will allow information workers to better “slice and dice data and create their own BI (business intelligence) applications and assets to share and collaborate on from within the familiar, everyday Microsoft Office productivity tools they already use.”

But last week at TechEd 2009 conferences, Microsoft announced SQL Server 2008 R2, which you might recall as previous code of Kilimanjaro. What? You thought Kilimanjaro was SQL Server 2010? Well, if you Google it, you'll see that many others think the same, and in fact there are announcements from very significant sources over the last few months talking about SQL Server 2010. So the information now is that there is no SQL Server 2010. "Never was." That the BI and self-service tools that were part of the release were actually the R2 release. That "Kilimanjaro" always referred to R2. The next full release of SQL Server will follow the R2 release by about 24-36 months. You can expect to see full release of R2 in the first half of next year - CTPs should follow later this year for testing.

I understand that Microsoft, like any company has to adapt its strategy when the world is currently in a big financial problem. In my opinion, Microsoft will be easier to convince customers to upgrade a SQL 2008 to SQL 2008 R2 than convince SQL 2008 to SQL 2010... well ... but starting to be many products, many names, many service packs, many cumulative packages, many functionalities ... truly begin to create confusion in people, that usually have great difficulty accept the change. I hope at least, that Microsoft does not change the format and design of the next version of Excel which is expected to have many more capabilities than Excel 2007. We shall see ... I am very curious about the improvements on the analytical tools and on the "Master Data Services"

Also, their advertising video is pretty funny (the introduction part). You can also sign up to receive notifications of the CTP. You can see it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/r2.aspx
Regards, Pedro

BI Resort - The BI Community

Finally I will present to my friends and to all those anonymous people that visit my blog, the BIResort comunity. I’m one of the founders of a BI community here in my beautiful country, Portugal! The community has the name of BI Resort, and we all wish to be a place to share knowledge, experiences and organize events about BI.

The founding members of this community work in Microsoft's partner companies, but could be many other professionals with an interest in "this world". The first step is taken, and we hope to have all your support to make this initiative a success. For my part, I promise to be present here for long… I have this blog for two years and have not lost my breath in this long journey.

If you feel curious to know something more about the Business Intelligence ... If you feel you can help someone to solve theoretical or practical problems ... if you had an experience in this area that could be shared... If you think it could be interesting bring to Portugal some communicators in this area ... if you think you can help make this world better ... then participate in this community. The doors are open to all! As we progressed, more details on objectives in the short, medium and long term will be shared with you.

For those who can create a blog in this community, contact me. It'll be an honor! I'll be waiting for your visit, not only here in my blog, but also in the www.BIResort.net

From Portugal to the rest of the world through this BI comunity!

For a better world!