Microsoft: One Step Closer to Making Business Intelligence Ubiquitous
Microsoft has scored on two counts recently in the business intelligence space. One was its ranking as one of the fastest-growing BI vendors in 2006 by IDC. What do you attribute the growth to?
Our ability to provide high-performance, enterprise-class BI solutions at low cost is the key factor driving Microsoft’s growth in BI. When this core value proposition is coupled with our unique ability to deliver BI capability directly into the productivity suites where users spend the bulk of their time, many customers find Microsoft’s BI offering very compelling.
A lot of third-party “pure play” BI software requires users to spend a lot of time switching between the “BI tool” and their day-to-day productivity suites. A large majority of customers want BI “in” the process. We spend a great deal of time putting intelligence where people work and collaborate daily. This is very attractive to customers. Most companies see the value of using business intelligence to drive their companies to better performance. We can allow them to provide more people with better insight. This is why we are growing. We are changing the economics and usage patterns of BI. Customers have been waiting (and asking) for this.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 was also recognized as the No. 1 online analytical processing (OLAP) server on the market. What gives it the competitive edge?
In addition to providing enterprise-class solutions at a lower cost, Microsoft can provide end-to-end OLAP solutions. Starting with the core, SQL Server Analysis Services, we provide a scalable, manageable, and feature rich platform for building OLAP solutions. One such feature is our Unified Dimensional Model (UDM), which provides a central metadata repository and allows a complete and integrated picture of the business across a wide variety of data sources. Combined with SQL Server Analysis Services’ KPI framework, business intelligence wizards, and support for XML/A, our financial services customers have a very powerful solution, which is also cost-effective and easy to manage.
Surrounding this core, we provide SQL Server Reporting Services, Visual Studio, and deep integration with Microsoft Office, so the overall solution is quite comprehensive in terms of support for developers, DBAs, and business users who need to perform analysis of the data.
This last part is very important. According to the OLAP Report, we’ve had the strongest OLAP solution in the market for the last five years. Now we’re adding very robust tools to allow people to unlock the potential of the OLAP platform.
What do you see as fueling the growth in the BI solutions market?
The key factor fueling BI growth is the need for pervasive business intelligence across many different aspects of the business, and for many different types of users. For example, in banking, the need for BI capabilities extends from the branch, where the branch manager needs to understand how well the staff is executing sales campaigns, all the way through to the back office where risk managers need an accurate picture of operational risks for compliance purposes. Microsoft envisions business intelligence as a key driver for this type of role-based productivity.
I also see our economic model being manifested. We’re seeing growth because, in addition to building solutions that scale, we price and package for scale. Financial institutions no longer need to limit BI usage because of cost constraints. They can finally deliver the pervasive intelligence they’ve always wanted, all the way from the back office to the sales agent or teller.
What are some of the biggest challenges for customers in the space?
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Brian Jackson,
Technology Strategist for Banking,
Worldwide Financial Services
Microsoft Corporation
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There are several key customer challenges in BI. On the business side, one set of challenges involves what we call “Customer Knowledge” scenarios. Financial firms need to have a complete picture of their relationship with the customer, across products and across channels. This capability is essential in order to both improve the quality of service, as well as to increase the effectiveness of sales campaigns. Business intelligence is crucial to understanding the customer and presenting offers that make sense in the context of the customer’s financial situation.
A second set of challenges revolves around performance management, including risk management and compliance. At the local, regional, and headquarters level, financial managers often need access to near real-time data in order to effectively manage their business. This is especially true for financial firms that have cross-border operations. Business intelligence allows the local in-country management to operate with a degree of autonomy by identifying and capitalizing on local trends, while providing headquarters with the reporting capability required for ensuring proper oversight.
On the technical side, there are a variety of challenges, such as translating between different data formats, supporting multiple languages, and enforcing role-specific privacy and security policies. Microsoft Business Intelligence provides robust support for these requirements.
What is Microsoft’s value to customers? How does it compare to Oracle and SAP?
Microsoft has a holistic view of business intelligence. We address all of a customer’s BI and performance management needs, from data integration and storage, to deep analysis and end-user reporting capabilities, as well as performance management solutions and Office integration. The list goes on and on. Compared to our competitors, we provide a more comprehensive solution.
I’m not sure it’s fair to just compare us to SAP and Oracle, because we differ from all the players in this space. We package our solution differently. For example, a lot of the core BI platform capabilities, such as SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services, are already part of the SQL Server 2005 license. On top of this platform, much of the end-user BI functionality is delivered using products that most customers already own, such as Microsoft Office. We disagree with charging $1,500 per user as some vendors do. We want to allow customers to take advantage of existing assets to deliver BI pervasively. A lot of vendors talk about pervasive BI, but when you consider what is required to actually deliver on this promise, I think you will see that Microsoft is uniquely positioned in this space. This includes all of the capability that we provide for developers, which we’ve barely mentioned, but also provides great value for our customers.
Microsoft is expected to launch Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 in late September and SQL Server 2008 the second quarter of 2008. What can you tell us about the benefits for financial services institutions? How are these releases going to enhance the BI landscape?
I think that PerformancePoint Server 2007 will have a significant effect on the BI landscape and on financial services firms in particular. Since PerformancePoint provides an integrated application including scorecards, dashboards, management reporting, analytics, planning, budgeting, forecasting, and consolidation, it provides the basis for solutions to the customer knowledge and performance management challenges mentioned earlier. PerformancePoint will be a key driver of role-based productivity for financial services firms.
When a financial business process requires employee input, typically that input comes via Excel. With PerformancePoint, we provide rigor to the process. Excel is still the input form, but the company’s logic, business rules, and other intellectual property (like algorithms) are centrally maintained by PerformancePoint Server. We really are adding value to every decision maker.
We have been investing in SQL Server BI functionality for many years. In one sense, PerformancePoint is simply an application that lives on SQL Server. The next version of SQL Server will continue to see investments in BI, from more analytic capabilities to even more value-added integration functionality. SQL Server 2008 will feature a number of BI enhancements that will further Microsoft’s vision of redefining pervasive insight, which means enabling BI on top of any data source, for any user, with dramatically better economics. We will be enabling organizations to integrate all of their data in an Enterprise Data Warehouse, reach all their users with a scalable BI platform, and empower every user with actionable insights. In addition, pervasive insight strengthens how users prepare and access data for business insight, increasing IT departments’ ability to react to business needs while keeping corporate assets secure and TCO low.
Can you talk a little about Corporate Performance Management (CPM)? Where is Microsoft going with CPM?
We see CPM becoming increasingly more important at all tiers of an enterprise, for many different types of users. Rather than being a tool only for analysts and managers at corporate headquarters, Microsoft envisions ubiquitous BI, which makes CPM a key tool for managers and information workers at all levels of an enterprise. With tools such as PerformancePoint Server 2007 and Office 2007, Microsoft is working to make BI and performance management tools available to users in a variety of roles. You will also see us invest in more areas under the Performance Management umbrella (CPM is just one area) as we move forward. In fact, in PerformancePoint Server 2007 we’ve already laid the groundwork to do so. In this version, we ship a lot of content around CPM (such as business rules and templates), but we also have companies and partners adding content for other areas, as well. This is just the beginning for us in the PM space.
One final question. Where is BI headed?
I think we will look back in a few years and be surprised at how few people had access to BI in the past. Microsoft will drive a new economic model for BI, and ubiquitous BI will become a key component of role-based productivity for financial institutions, driving deeper customer knowledge, improved risk management and compliance, and more effective global operations.
For more on Business Intelligence, see:
www.microsoft.com/bi/
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