Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Technologies

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Business Intelligence

In the opening chapter of this book we talked about the core solution areas

that MOSS addresses, one of which is Business Intelligence (BI). Business

intelligence is all about making smarter use of your business information,

and there are three core products in the Microsoft space that enable this:

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 platform, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

2007, and Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005. There are

also a couple of complementary products in this space: namely ProClarity

Analytics 6 and Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (which

builds on ScoreCard Manager). Within SQL Server, you have powerful ana-

lytics via the Analysis Services, which help businesses understand and analyze

large volumes of rapidly changing data. The Business Scorecard Manager is

typically used by C-level executives who need to track overall performance

against company goals.

What we are about to discuss in this chapter are the BI features that

SharePoint enables. We like to call this BI for the masses, since it really

empowers teams of users to share and analyze any kind of business data

without actually targeting a specific scenario (as, for example, ScoreCard

Manager does). What is the primary target for the source of such business

data? Excel. Yes, Excel—but not as you once knew it! As we will see, Share-

Point addresses one of the primary issues with Excel—that being that the

data contained within a workbook is seldom shared or reused outside of the

confines of Excel. However, there is a wealth of business logic and intellec-

tual property contained in Excel workbooks that should be readily consum-

able by others on your team or even by a wider audience. And although we

said Excel is the primary target for the source of business data, remember

that Excel itself can consume data from SQL Server and other databases, so

targeting Excel really means targeting all the data sources that Excel can get

at. So let’s discuss something called Excel Services and the other BI features

that SharePoint brings to the masses, such as key performance indicators

(KPIs), dashboards, and reporting libraries.