Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference 2007

By Kalman Toth, Business Intelligence Architect

May 13 , 2007

3 sunny days, quite unusual in rainy Seattle, welcomed the first ever Microsoft Business Intelligence conference with almost 4,000 IT professionals attending from all over the world. The place was the downtown Washington State Convention Center with world-class facilities to host such a large conference.  For 3 days, attendees were primed by Microsoft and outside experts the new party line: BI for the masses. Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, used an alternate expression in his keynote speech: democratization of BI.

Outside experts were stressing on analysis as the key for corporate business success. Meanwhile Microsoft technical and functional experts articulated specific current and future products to achieve corporate growth and profit goals. Among the current products SQL Server 2005 with Analysis, Reporting and Integration Services (SSAS, SSRS & SSIS), Sharepoint Server, Microsoft Dynamics and ProClarity were stressed.

The future products lineup included: SQL Server KATMAI (codename for SQL Server 2008 after an Alaskan National Park), PerformancePoint Server, and Office 2007. KATMAI was demonstrated first time, showing off support for spatial data types which can be used for map-based & GPS applications. Hands-on lab was available to try the new or future products from Microsoft.

The hot BI buzzword collection was limited to a few expressions: OLAP analysis, data mining, KPI (Key Performance Indicators), dashboard reports, interactive reports and scorecards of all different kinds (balanced, real-time, etc.) for all different staff, from CEO to janitor.

While it came up in several discussions, but usually down played by Microsoft executives and presenters, Microsoft is going after Oracle's and SAP's multi-billion dollars annual financial market shares. More imminent and future acquisitions, and the7 billion dollars R&D are the main vehicles; Microsoft partners from individual consultants to large corporations are the drivers to achieve the ambitious goal.

“Super enthusiastic” became the slogan of the conference despite that some Microsoft executives considered the expression a bit risky in the world of business enterprise computing and analysis.