What kind of BI powerhouse is Microsoft?
ENT News | at | by Mike
As 2003 draws to a close, Microsoft is busily preparing an enterprise reporting add-on for SQL Server for release early next year and has also announced a substantial overhaul of SQL Server's extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) capabilities. Microsoft has been a BI player for at least half a decade, introducing its first back-end BI offerings-an OLAP add-on called "OLAP Services" and an ETL facility called Data Transformation Services (DTS)-with SQL Server 7.0.
The latest moves offer proof that the software giant is intent on enhancing the BI capabilities of its flagship database. The company has introduced a metadata repository, ratcheted up the integration between its Excel front-end tool and SQL Server, enhanced both OLAP Services-rechristened as Analysis Services (AS) for SQL Server 2000-and DTS incrementally, and, in a related move, introduced a CRM offering (under the auspices of its Microsoft Business Solutions division).