REDMOND, Wash., May 8, 2002 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of the Microsoft® SQL Server™
Accelerator for Business Intelligence (Accelerator for BI). The Accelerator for BI is a rapid application development tool to automate the process of building the infrastructure of an analytical application. The tool was created so partners can quickly and more easily build customized BI solutions to meet customers specific needs. The Accelerator for BI lowers the barrier to entry for developing analytical applications, making business intelligence more accessible to customers.
The Accelerator for BI encapsulates industry best practices and automates the building process to create the back end for a customized BI solution, significantly decreasing the amount of time needed for design and development. Automating these procedures enables partners and customers to spend less time coding and architecting the solution so they can instead focus on the unique end-user business requirements. The resulting applications have better business focus and enable the customer to bring the solution to market faster, resulting in a higher return on investment.
“Historically, data warehouse projects have been difficult to develop and can take several months to complete due largely to the painstaking process to set up the back-end portion of the analytical application,”
said Bill Baker, general manager for SQL Server at Microsoft.
“The SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence structures the development process, so partners can develop analytical applications in a matter of days vs. months.”
Developing the Business Intelligence Ecosystem
The Accelerator for BI includes an ecosystem based on SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services that provides support, tools and best practices for building business intelligence applications. It enables customers to focus on their business needs and partners to focus on their core competencies in developing and integrating custom analytic solutions. The custom analytics builder lets partners add their own intellectual property and services to provide added-value solutions to the customers.
“The Microsoft SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence has truly revolutionized how we build the back end,”
said Dan Bulos, president of Symmetry Corp., which helped Microsoft develop the SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence.
“By automating the best practices of BI design and development, the Accelerator for BI makes it possible to develop applications in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. We are glad to have been a part of the development process.”
“The SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence represents a significant step in Microsofts goal of advancing SQL Server and Analysis Services as a widely deployed analytical platform,”
said Dr. Henry Morris, vice president for Applications and Information Access software research at IDC.
“By aiding in the definition of back-end data structures, it should make the creation of analytic applications on Analysis Services within the reach of more developers than was possible before.”
The Accelerator for BI offers partners and customers the following key benefits:
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Customized solutions.
The Accelerator for BI enables partners to deliver solutions that are based on client needs; these customized analytic applications give customers better access to and understanding of the data that is important to them. -
Faster time to market.
The Accelerator for BI automates back-end processes, enabling developers to quickly create and deploy customized analytical solutions in a fraction of the time. -
Increased return on investment.
The Accelerator for BI increases return on investment by shortening the development cycle, reproducing other successful models and implementations, prototyping and deploying rapidly, and enforcing best practices. -
Flexible solution.
The Accelerator for BI allows easy integration with existing information systems. The framework includes a flexible development environment called the Analytics Builder Worksheet that is adaptable for rapid iterative development and is reusable for consistency in future deployments. This flexibility allows businesses to adapt to shifting conditions over time. -
Extensible framework and ecosystem.
The Accelerator for BI is part of a total ecosystem to help the industry build better business intelligence solutions. The framework lets partners add their own expertise, while the ecosystem includes prescriptive architecture guidance, best practices, partner solutions, and a support network that will help increase the penetration of business intelligence. -
Increased access to SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services
. The Accelerator for BI is the fastest path to delivering analytical solutions based on SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services. The simplified process helps partners build customized solutions that take advantage of enterprise-class scalability and the industry-leading Data Transformation Services, OLAP and data mining features of the SQL Server platform.
By helping partners develop and deploy business intelligence applications more quickly and easily, Microsoft is delivering on its vision to make business intelligence more pervasive and more accessible to everyone.
The SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence is available for download today at no additional cost to licensed SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition users. More information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/solutions/bi/.
About SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 is the complete database and analysis offering for rapidly delivering the next generation of scalable e-commerce, line-of-business and data warehousing solutions. SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services provides the business intelligence enterprises need to make smarter decisions. Over time, decisions made using this kind of intelligence can have a dramatic bottom-line effect on the business. More information on Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/bi/ .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft and Windows are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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Support for Microsoft SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence
Customers
“Were building a custom analytical solution with the Accelerator for BI in a much shorter time than we anticipated. The solution will provide us with the historical analysis we need to improve our power consumption data forecasts and, as a result, improve service to our customers.”
Sean Durfy
Vice President and COO
ENMAX Energy
“We have run an initial project utilizing BI tools, and this has enabled us to integrate the company and better control our projects and forecasts. We are now on a path of expanding the use of BI cubes throughout the group, both deeper and wider, and we believe that the Accelerator for BI is an essential tool for us to achieve this objective.”
John Potier
CIO
RTS Group
“By using the SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence for all our future development, we will ensure consistency in design and implementation. This also enables us to deliver functionality-rich business solutions in a low-cost and easy-to-maintain method.”
Dan Bainbridge
Team Leader for Data Warehouse
Shell Canada
Partners
“Companies want to see the benefits of BI quickly, they want to employ proven approaches and they want their solutions built upon industry-standard platforms. Our BI Jumpstart Program and the SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence meet these needs.”
Michael Luckevich
CEO
Aspirity
”
Companies are focusing on business-driven, flexible, quick-time-to-market solutions with a quantifiable ROI. The intelligent Scorecard, with the Microsoft SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence, will greatly expand the capabilities of IT project teams, allowing them to be significantly more productive.”
David Morgan
Director of Implementation Technology
Business Intelligence Solutions Group Inc.
“Almost every organization has lots of data. The largest and most common business problem is the inability to access the right data at the right time in the form most useful to who needs it. Using Microsoft SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence, Blackstone & Cullen helped solve this problem for RTS Wright at its Nashville location. Using the latest SQL Server applications, we again helped a large, geographically diverse client address a significant business problem.”
Dr. Frank Cullen
Co-Founder and Principal
Blackstone & Cullen Inc.
“Cognos has a long history of supporting Microsoft users with the industrys best tools for accessing, analyzing and sharing critical enterprisewide corporate information. The SQL Server Accelerator for BI is a benefit to Microsoft customers in that it allows for the rapid creation of analytical applications for SQL Server 2000 and Analysis Services. Cognos supports and continues to extend the Microsoft platform to provide mission-critical business intelligence for customers.”
Patrick OLeary
Vice President of Strategic Alliances
Cognos
”
Our team has been building applications for the consumer marketplace for most of the past
10 years. Out of this experience, we developed a great feel for the portions of these applications that were consistent from one customer to another. That led us to creating G4 Analytics. The SQL Server Accelerator for BI gives us a platform to implement our ideas, allowing us to focus on the needs of our market while we rely on the tremendous resources of Microsoft to build the underlying technology.”
Richard Hall
President
G4 Analytics
“Our customers expect high ROI analytical solutions, and NoetixDW allows us to quickly and confidently source Oracle Financials data. Microsofts Accelerator for BI facilitates loading this data into Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, and this approach provides a great end-to-end solution delivering business insight.”
Mark Robinson
BI Practice Manager, Chicago Office
Greenbrier & Russel Inc.
“Immedient is excited about utilizing the Microsoft SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence to develop BI solutions that enable our clients to make better, faster business decisions. The Accelerator for Business Intelligence allows us to rapidly develop BI solutions for our clients.”
Robert ODell
National Solutions Director
Immedient Corp.
“MIS AG and Microsoft share the same vision: making business intelligence as end-user oriented as possible. MIS AG has long supported Microsofts data warehousing initiative, so its logical that we support the SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence as well.”
Stefan Sexl
General Manager
MIS GmbH
“Were leveraging Noetixs experience in mapping Oracle applications to more easily and quickly build business reports by focusing our expertise on helping companies develop their data warehouse. Noetix provides the link between Oracle application data and Microsoft front-end analysis tools such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Data Analyzer.”
Kirby Bartholomew
Product Manager
Noetix Corp.
“Panorama is committed to provide the most effective and comprehensive Web-based business intelligence solutions for enterprises from a wide variety of industries and applications. The newly developed Microsoft SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence combined with Panoramas NovaView technologies enables the delivery of a quick and flexible customized solution. The NovaView e-BI Accelerator Client for Accelerator for BI makes it simple for decision-makers and knowledge workers to find data and simple to use data.”
Rony Ross
CEO
Panorama Software Systems Ltd.
“We are very excited about the prospects of the Microsoft SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence in jump-starting high-value BI applications. I particularly like its ability to capture and reuse domain knowledge in a template.”
Shahbaz Anwar
CEO and Founder
PolyVista Inc.
“ProClaritys vision for business intelligence is to enable organizations to improve the speed and quality of decision-making and business performance by allowing access and the ability to share data, both internally and with partners. ProClarity and Microsoft continue to gain strength in the business intelligence industry by delivering to customers enterprise-class analytic solutions that meet their complex analytic and deployment requirements at a much lower cost. ProClarity solutions seamlessly integrate with applications built with the SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence, providing mutual customers with an easy approach to accelerating the development and deployment of analytic applications.”
Clay Young
Vice President of Marketing
ProClarity Corp.
“We have already implemented the Microsoft SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence at two client sites. Both of our clients are extremely satisfied with the results. This tool delivers a BI framework that leverages best design practices and provides a prescriptive, self-documenting architecture. Organizations can build strategic BI applications to quickly and easily identify trends and patterns, make more informed decisions, and meet their aggressive business targets. We want all our clients to experience the kind of success were witnessing here. With Quadrus technical expertise and a BI tool of this caliber, were confident they will.”
Michael Matrick
Vice President of Business Solutions
Quadrus Development Inc.
“The Accelerator for Business Intelligence makes our consultants more productive by an order of magnitude. At Choice Homes, the Accelerator for BI enabled us to shorten what would have taken four to five days of development for the client to one hour. The result is that we can offer our clients greater value for their consulting dollars.”
Dan Bulos
President
Symmetry Corp.
“Using the Microsoft Sales and Marketing Analytics tool, part of the SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence, Unisys can improve aggregation of data into OLAP cubes through the high I/O bandwidth and processing power of the ES7000. Unisys delivers near-linear scaling from eight to 32 processors, delivering enterprise-class performance and scalability in a Windows® 2000 environment to help businesses gain competitive advantage with more timely information.”
Don Montgomery
Director of Strategic Programs
for Business Intelligence
Unisys Corp.
