Intelligent Enterprise

When you look at the portfolio of software assets that is Microsoft Business Solutions, (MBS) the overlapping functionality is immediately apparent. This is hardly a surprise when that portfolio, built through acquisition, includes not one or two but four mid-tier ERP systems. Nowhere is this overlapping functionality more evident than in business analytics.

Effective business analytics has to be a core competency for all MBS customers; however, the MBS business analytics landscape is becoming more, not less, complex. In this article, I will survey MBS for Analytics (MBSA) functionality at an overview level, with the aim of bringing some clarity to this confusing but important part of Microsoft's applications portfolio.

The Keystones

You can't begin to understand MBSA without first acknowledging two non-MBS assets that play a major role in their direction: Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Office. These two products drive significantly higher revenues than the whole MBS division combined. With each successive release, it's clear that SQL Server and Office are becoming more and more influential in how MBS will ultimately work as core components of a Microsoft business solution. Figure 1 shows MBSA's position in the SQL Server and Office "sandwich." Note that MBS competitors also use SQL Server for application data management and link to Office on the desktop, so they equally benefit from this architecture.

FIGURE 1 The MBS Business Analytics Stack.

Microsoft SQL Server is the foundation for MBSA. As Figure 2 shows, SQL Server is no longer just a relational DBMS. Over the years, Microsoft has been enhancing its core database engine with capabilities and services to extend its value. Beginning in the mid 1990s, Microsoft focused on making SQL Server a better foundation for corporate data warehouse and data mart applications, largely to compete with Oracle and IBM. Through acquisition and development, Microsoft has added three service components that significantly enhance SQL Server's analytic capabilities: Analysis Services, Notification Services, and Reporting Services. SQL Server's "Yukon" release, planned for rollout in 2005, will further extend and enhance these three services, especially for developers of business analytic solutions.

FIGURE 2 SQL Server's Business Analytic Services.

MBSA also depends on SQL Server's Data Transformation Services (DTS). Primarily, this technology manages the extraction and transformation of data from the transaction processing systems into Analysis Services cubes.

At Your Services

Analysis Services enables you to create and manage multidimensional datasets — that is, "cubes" — which then provision front-end OLAP tools. Notification Services add event recognition, response, and subscription functions to help deliver "real-time" analytics. And finally, Reporting Services let business users create, manage, and deliver reports similar to those provided by Crystal Reports (now part of Business Objects' product portfolio).

By making it easy to output data in the form of Analysis Services cubes, MBS lets users perform analysis at the desktop using MBSA offerings or third-party tools from vendors such as ProClarity. Microsoft employs Notification Services currently in its Great Plains Business Alerts and in the forthcoming event management functionality in Navision 4.0 (due in late 2004). MBSA, however, doesn't yet take advantage of Reporting Services, which Microsoft released earlier this year.

Microsoft Excel, frequently touted as the world's most popular business analysis tool, is the core Office contribution to MBSA. Excel serves as a destination for financial reports and other information coming from the main MBS assets (Axapta, CRM, FRx [based on FRx Software technology], Great Plains, Navision, and Solomon), enabling users to further analyze data using the toolset offered within Excel worksheets and workbooks. For example, with Excel's PivotTable and PivotChart technology, users can perform desktop slice-and-dice OLAP-style functions; these technologies also serve as the means to visualize and drill down on summary data. Business managers frequently deploy Excel's data formatting tools to take basic financial reports and turn them into presentation quality documents for executive review.

Recently, Microsoft introduced add-on Office Accelerators to help with, for example, Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance. It may not be long before we see other kinds of accelerators specifically oriented toward business analytics, such as "Budget Accelerator" or "Scorecard Accelerator."Microsoft Data Analyzer, a low-cost multidimensional data analysis and visualization tool, is one Office orphan. In case you didn't know, Data Analyzer can read and visualize SQL Server Analysis Services cubes, export data to PowerPoint and Excel, and route cube data for further analysis via Outlook. Microsoft, however, doesn't draw much attention to this particular piece of technology.

Outlook has an important role to play in the delivery of electronic reports and notification alerts to analytic stakeholder communities. And in this vein, SharePoint Portal Server will play a role in the future of MBSA.

As you can see, SQL Server and Office are clearly important players in the world of MBSA. You should take it as a given that many of the analytic capabilities that I will discuss in the next section assume that the latest versions of both SQL Server and Office are in place. As far as Microsoft is concerned, a "business solution" means SQL Server, Office, and one or more MBS apps.