REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 1, 2001 — Microsoft Corp. today announced availability of Microsoft® Data Analyzer, the latest product in the Microsoft Office family, which offers innovative graphical analysis and data visualization capabilities that will enable knowledge workers to rapidly identify new business opportunities, trends and issues.
Data Analyzer adds rich visualization and analysis capabilities to Microsofts current business intelligence offering of SQL Server™
2000 Analysis Services and Office XP, which provides Excel 2002, Office Web Components and digital dashboards.
“Data Analyzer is a great addition to the Office family because it enables any knowledge worker to perform sophisticated analysis with an easy-to-use tool,”
said Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of Office at Microsoft.
“An application such as Data Analyzer is an example of how we are delivering the tools customers need to quickly and easily unlock hidden knowledge from their corporations and use that knowledge to make smart business decisions.”
Industry Support
The Data Analyzer technology is complementary to many independent software vendors (ISV) offerings and provides them and other Microsoft Certified Partners with new solution opportunities.
“We are pleased with todays announcement of broad availability of Data Analyzer. We believe Data Analyzer will help extend business intelligence to the masses and raise overall awareness of the value of business intelligence to corporations, creating more opportunities for everyone,”
said Graham Hislop, managing director of GHI Technologies, a Toronto-based business intelligence solutions provider.
“We will continue to deliver the high-end business intelligence solutions that companies need for advanced analysis. With Microsoft, we can help companies make better business decisions and increase their competitive advantages at all levels within their organizations.”
Early customers are already pleased with the benefits they are reaping from Data Analyzer.
“With Data Analyzer, business decision-makers at all levels of our company are now able to quickly view the data they need to ask and answer critical business questions,”
said Doug Morley, manager of sales automation and administration for Novopharm Ltd., a pharmaceutical manufacturer.
“Until Data Analyzer, access to this information was limited within our organization to our analytic experts. Putting this data quickly and easily at the fingertips of our business decision-makers and making it easy for them to share the data with their teams enables our employees to make better decisions faster.”
Industry analysts agree that Data Analyzers ease of use and powerful visualization capabilities are a winning combination. According to Jacqueline Sweeney-Coolidge, director of Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence at Hurwitz Group,
“Microsoft is bringing advanced visualization capabilities to the people who need to make business decisions daily but dont have the time for a lot of training.”
About Data Analyzer
Data Analyzer enables knowledge workers to quickly and easily evaluate business data for intuitive business analysis, easily publish and share data with others, and improve data analysis productivity. Data Analyzer allows knowledge workers to realize the following benefits:
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Rapidly identify opportunities and trends, find business anomalies and visualize numerous sets of data through a single interface by displaying multiple measures and relationships between business dimensions
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Quickly identify areas for further exploration by providing standardized business questions and measures to analyze data and identify key performance indicators
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Easily share and publish data with others via the Web, Office applications (including Excel 2002 and PowerPoint® 2002), SharePoint™
Team Services and SharePoint Portal Server -
Enable users to take advantage of the powerful capabilities of SQL Server Analysis Services without having to learn a complex language
Data Analyzer is now available through the Microsoft Volume License Program as well as select resellers for an estimated retail price of $179 (U.S.). More information on Microsoft Data Analyzer can be found on the Microsoft Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/office/dataanalyzer/ .
About Office XP
Office XP provides a much smarter work experience for individuals, teams and organizations. Office XP makes productivity simple for individuals by helping them get the most out of Office and giving them tools they can rely on. Office XP enables collaboration for everyone by revolutionizing the way people work with others on documents and introducing SharePoint Team Services to manage projects and activities via the Web. Office XP also provides a flexible way to solve business needs by delivering rich business solutions and improved security and reliability tools businesses need to deploy and manage Office.
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, PowerPoint and SharePoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
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