The Microsoft Business Intelligence suite encompasses a number of products that can be utilised as necessary to create the required solution. Of course, your organisation may already hold licences for some or all or these products, allowing you to better understand your various datasets without major outlay. Your users may well be familiar with the some or all of the products, reducing training and start-up costs. The ‘self service’ nature of some of these solutions can also ease any tension between the IT department and business users as regards speed of deployment and flexibility.

The products are Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and PerformancePoint Services. By utilising various combinations or these Microsoft products, BI solutions can be created to address both enterprise level needs and power user needs. The solutions are scalable to suit the requirements of varying organisations.

The 2010 releases of Excel and SharePoint further enhance the Microsoft offering. Office Excel 2010 includes a free PowerPivot add-in that allows business users to pull in significant amounts of data into Office Excel and then analyse it in a familiar environment. Of course the premise here is that these users are ‘power users’ but the major benefit is that they can operate in a self-serve environment and not be overly reliant on the IT team when dealing with large and complex data. When the analysis work is complete the users can then upload the Office Excel document to SharePoint so that it can be shared with others. These PowerPivot documents live on the SharePoint server, allowing the IT team to retain control as necessary.

The 2010 release of SharePoint also includes PerformancePoint Services and is generally viewed as an enterprise level BI solution.  it’s inclusion within SharePoint provides more flexible configuration, a more consistent user experience, a single enterprise level security model along with enhanced backup and disaster recovery capability.