Microsoft is pushing into the business intelligence (BI) market with a set of new capabilities that it hopes will make corporate analysis easier for new users.
The new offerings will be included in the next release of Microsoft SQL Server, currently codenamed Kilimanjaro, which will include additional data warehousing.
"Microsoft's goal is to transform the way companies think of BI through familiar and intuitive business-friendly tools that help them unlock the power of BI across their organisations," said Stephen Elop, Microsoft Business Division president. 数据挖掘交友
"If you know how to use Word and Excel, then you'll be able to use our BI - that's our commitment to customers," he said, speaking at the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference.
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Tony Crowhurst, Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server product manager, added: "Users will be able to create their own BI applications and use these with the Microsoft Office tools already used."
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Microsoft does not expect the new BI capabilities to replace Sharepoint but, rather, that it will give users a new way to carry out ad-hoc analysis and to author reports themselves, added Crowhurst. 数据挖掘实验室
Helena Schwenk, an analyst at Ovum, predicted: "The new BI capabilities will allow users to use Excel as an interface into SQL Server and bring more data into Excel so they are not limited to the rogue capacity of the spreadsheet. "This frees up business users but allows IT to maintain control," she said, describing the new offering as "Excel on steroids".
Customers will be able to get Kilmanjaro within the next 12 months via a community technology preview. The product is intended to be fully released in the first half of 2010. 数据挖掘工具
