A demo of what’s in the box . . .

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Nice demo of PowerPivot running on the new BI Appliance

Enjoy!

So what is it? . . . I’ll give [...]]]> Well, it is past midnight, East Coast time, so I can finally, and I mean FINALLY, talk about a new product that Microsoft and HP have been jointly developing for many months now. Welcome to a new PowerPivot world – a world with the first PowerPivot Appliance.

So what is it? . . . I’ll give my take as one of the lead architects of the product. It is PowerPivot-in-a-box. It is PowerPivot on a quality, server-class machine with the following hardware and software:

• Hardware: HP ProLiant DL360 G7 (X5650 processor, 12 cores) with 96GB memory, 8 internal 300GB SFF SAS disks (total 2.4TB raw storage), with support services.
• Software: Windows 2008 R2, SharePoint 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, and PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010
• During installation, we’ve automated the complete Windows, SharePoint, SQL Server and PowerPivot installations – you answer a few questions and off we go. Come back in a few minutes and you have a complete, tuned, PowerPivot server all up and running. We’ve tailored SharePoint and the SQL RDBMS for the hardware. We’ve tuned the backup and restore facility for the hardware. Everything is ready to go. This makes the provisioning of the machine much more straightforward than if you had purchased the component parts individually and installed them yourself.

Just download and install the PowerPivot for Excel add-in into your Excel 2010 desktop machines, point your browser to the appliance – and off you go.

I don’t normally go for marketing speak, but the IDC white paper explains it best:

“The HP Business Decision Appliance solves many of the challenges commonly associated with implementing BI solutions. For the small-to-medium-sized business that has little to no IT infrastructure, an HP Business Decision Appliance can provide powerful BI functionality without the need to hire an army of consultants to make it ready for use. For larger organizations, an HP Business Decision Appliance can provide a complete production environment for users sooner than IT has the manpower to construct a comparable configuration in piecemeal fashion. Although users are responsible for defining data connections and producing workbooks, IT still has the ability to monitor and manage the overall environment.

For organizations having no prior experience with Microsoft technologies, the HP Business Decision Appliance allows IT to implement a working solution with confidence that the hardware and software will work together correctly from day one. Even when IT has extensive experience with Microsoft, the appliance saves time and costs associated with the design, acquisition, and implementation of a high-performing BI environment.

The HP Business Decision Appliance is beneficial for consultants as well. For many consultants, a proof-of-concept is often the beginning of a long-term relationship with an organization. Even with a proof-of-concept project, consultants often spend the first two days performing installation and configuration tasks that are necessary, but provide no value. By using the appliance, consultants can start building out SharePoint sites and connecting to data sources on the first day of engagement, thereby engaging with the client organization sooner in the process of solution development.

No matter the size of an organization or the level of experience with Microsoft technologies, the HP Business Decision Appliance has a positive impact on the business in several ways:

• IT reduces costs and risks associated with implementation, saving 1-6 months of research and testing.
• Users start integrating and analyzing business data on the first day with minimal IT involvement.
• Users work with familiar Microsoft technologies to create, share, and secure powerful insights.
• IT uses an integrated management dashboard to easily monitor usage and server health.”

http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/2/D/62D06227-FE9F-4256-A187-DD4BC91B2D62/I2A_BI__Paper_SSBI Appliance_final_10Jan.docx

Now is that cool or what? All of this for a single low price from HP. You get the best of all worlds.

Have any questions? What to know the internal details? Feel free to ask them below as comments and I’d be glad to answer them for you.

Enjoy. This is such a cool product.

_-_-_ Dave

Some links:

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/appliances/hp-ssbi.aspx

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/pscmisc/vac/us/en/sm/solutions/business-overview.html

Enjoy!

There are many reasons to go to TechEd North America 2010 in New Orleans this year.  After all, it is THE event for developers and IT Professionals.  And if you want to know more about PowerPivot, here’s yet another reason why you need to go.

There will be a raffle to win a signed copy of [...]]]>  

There are many reasons to go to TechEd North America 2010 in New Orleans this year.  After all, it is THE event for developers and IT Professionals.  And if you want to know more about PowerPivot, here’s yet another reason why you need to go.

There will be a raffle to win a signed copy of the PowerPivot Architecture Technical Diagram (screenshot below) in each of five PowerPivot sessions (five diagrams in total). The sessions are:

• BIE04-INT – Building Custom Extensions to the PowerPivot Management Dashboard (Mon 6/7 1:00pm-2:15pm, Room 241)
• BIC06-INT – SQLCAT: PowerPivot Best Practices and Enterprise Case Studies (Mon 6/7 4:30pm-5:45pm, Room 241)
• BIE22-INT – Tips and Tricks for Troubleshooting a Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint Installation (Wedn 6/9 8:00am-9:15am, Room 241)
• BIE401 – Deep Dive on PowerPivot Technologies (Wedn 6/9 1:30pm-2:45pm, Room 238)
• BIE303 – Deploying and Managing PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010 (Thurs 6/10 9:45am-11:00am, Room 252)

Just attend one of these sessions our very own PowerPivotGeek Dave Wickert will enter you into a raffle for a full size 44” x 34” signed copy of our PowerPivot Client/Server Architecture poster.

Brought to you by SQLCAT, Analysis Services Team, and our friends at SQL Marketing!

“Excel as a Tool for Business Intelligence”

Information workers want self-service [...]]]> As today was “Launch Day” (http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010launch/en-us/Pages/home.aspx) for Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2, I was able to pickup a few PowerPivot testimonial videos. I am not a marketing guy; nor do I play one on TV, but these were pretty cool. PowerPivot RULES!

“Excel as a Tool for Business Intelligence”

Information workers want self-service business intelligence tools they can easily use. The new features in Excel 2010 and PowerPivot for Excel are potential game changers. The big advantage is the ability to pull-in data from a wide variety of sources, easily slice and dice large amounts of data, and create reports without heavy reliance on IT. End users can also publish and share reports throughout the organization using Sharepoint 2010. IT can still manage the data environment while allowing the users the flexibility and control that they need to uncover and gain insights.

Speakers:
Sandi Cesko, Chairman, Studio Moderna
Joshua Sebert, CFO, GAFCON
Miha Kovac, IT Director, Studio Moderna
Matt Mace, President and CEO, Blue Granite
Charles Spadafore, IT Director, VectorForm
Kurt Steckling, CEO, VectorForm

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010launch/en-us/Pages/sessiondetail.aspx?sessionid=319

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“Managing a Self-Service Business Intelligence Environment”

Traditional BI solutions are difficult to scale and manage. In many companies, the IT department defines how much freedom and access users can enjoy. With PowerPivot for Excel and SQL Server 2008 R2, the IT team can trust the system and users, and facilitate self-service BI. Users have easy access to raw data, so they can filter, slice and re-arrange, compile views and run analysis without heavy reliance on IT. From a management viewpoint, the IT team can monitor the workbooks performance while at the same time keep an eye on server utilization. With SQL Server 2008 R2, IT teams can ensure that their mission critical applications are scalable and highly available.

Speakers:
Prabal Accharya, Microsoft Alliance Manager, OSISoft
Fabio Catassi, CIO, Mediterranean Shipping Company
Bob Erickson, EVP, Interlink Technologies Inc.
Ayad Shammout, Lead Technical Database Administrator, CareGroup Healthcare System

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010launch/en-us/Pages/sessiondetail.aspx?sessionid=320

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“Building a Business Intelligence Platform with SQL Server”

Large organizations running mission-critical data-intensive applications need a comprehensive information platform for business intelligence needs. With the increasing amount of data being collected, businesses have to turn this data into insights. SQL Server 2008 R2 gives companies a reliable and scalable solution that delivers analysis and insights quickly. New features in SQL Server Reporting Services also improves IT’s ability to design and produce high-quality reports. With the enhancements of SharePoint 2010, companies have the ability to bring all levels of data into a dashboard.

Speakers:
Bob Bloisjolie, Principal Consultant, Thorogood Associaties
Nicolas Genest, BI Application Manager, VentePrivee
Pauline Lamielle, Marketing Intelligence Manager, VentePrivee

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010launch/en-us/Pages/sessiondetail.aspx?sessionid=330

Enjoy!

Important : If you install the 32-bit version of Excel 2010, you must use the 32-bit version of PowerPivot. If you install the 64-bit version of Excel 2010, you must use the 64-bit version of PowerPivot.

PowerPivot [...]]]> For those who would looking for specific downloads of the PowerPivot for Excel 2010 RTM bits , here they are:

Important : If you install the 32-bit version of Excel 2010, you must use the 32-bit version of PowerPivot. If you install the 64-bit version of Excel 2010, you must use the 64-bit version of PowerPivot.

PowerPivot for Microsoft® Excel X86 Executable (32 bit) (or here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=186058&clcid=0×409)
PowerPivot for Microsoft® Excel X64 Executable (64 bit) (or here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=186059&clcid=0×409)

Enjoy!

Great stuff in there – geek out on it . . .

Enjoy!

Room 241, Monday, June 7 1:00 PM – 2:15

The PowerPivot management [...]]]> For those interested, I will be giving the following sessions at TechEd 2010 in New Orleans – June 7-10, 2010 – Come Join US!!
(http://www.microsoft.com/events/techednorthamerica/)

1. BIE04-INT Building Custom Extensions to the PowerPivot Management Dashboard 
   

Room 241, Monday, June 7
1:00 PM – 2:15

The PowerPivot management dashboard allows administrators to identify bottlenecks, track resource consumption and in general understand how the PowerPivot parts on the farm are running. An important feature of the dashboard is that it is extensible. Administrators can write and add new reports to the dashboard. In this chalk talk, we present the reporting schema that PowerPivot provides and show how some of the most frequently used reports are implemented. We take a few, sample ‘what-if’ scenarios and show how to solve the requirement via a report and then link that report into the dashboard. To have the scenarios be as real-world as possible, we open up the list to suggestions from attendees prior to the session and let them submit their requests for what kind of reports they would like to see us develop in the talk. 

2. BIE22-INT Tips and Tricks for Troubleshooting a Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint Installation

   Room 241, Wednesday, June 9
   8:00 AM – 9:15 AM

   PowerPivot presents an interesting challenge for debugging and figuring out what is happening when problems occur. There are a lot of moving parts on a running farm. PowerPivot uses a mixture of SharePoint and SQL logging, tracing and debugging. In this chalk talk we review the various logs and trace files that are generated by SharePoint and SQL (and how they map to PowerPivot features). We take some common usage scenarios, inject faults, and show how you identify and rectify the problem. When do you look at IIS logs; when the NT event log; when SQL? And what do you do on a large farm where the various machine logs and traces are not consolidated. A customer’s first impression of a new product is all-important. This chalk talk is designed to help you guide customers, whether you are a TS, MCS, or support person. We give you the knowledge that will help you help your customers.

3. BIE401 Deep Dive on PowerPivot Technologies

   Room 238,  Wednesday, June 9
   1:30 PM – 2:45 PM

   This session provides an in-depth technical review of the PowerPivot architecture. We look at the PowerPivot Excel addin, its various components, how they interact, and the ways that they communicate with the server. On the server side, we look at how PowerPivot uses the new SharePoint 2010 shared service architecture and how it accomplishes its main capabilities: data access (connections to PowerPivot data), data refresh, report gallery (with its various Microsoft Silverlight controls) and its usage infrastructure and reporting system.

4. BIE303 Deploying and Managing PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010

   Room 252, Thursday, June 10
   9:45 AM – 11:00 AM

   This session focuses on the role of IT professionals in the Managed Self-Service BI environment consisting of PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint. We show how to set up a new SharePoint farm with PowerPivot from scratch, and also how you can add PowerPivot into your existing SharePoint installation. We also demonstrate the tools and services available to IT professionals for managing the PowerPivot environment in SharePoint, including the Management Dashboard.

So . . . What do you think? Any changes or suggestions? If you are a reader, make sure the come by and introduce yourself after the session! I’d love to meet you and find out how you are using PowerPivot.

Enjoy.