Is your organization suffering from database sprawl? Do you have too many disparate servers and too little insight into their efficiency? Would you like to find a way to consolidate your resources into a more manageable, efficient and agile datacenter? Data growth has driven server growth and with it management headaches and increased costs to manage data. HP and Microsoft have created industry leading appliance solution to address enterprise customer data management demands, while also reducing costs and bringing you the benefit of a private cloud. The solution is complete, optimized and ready from the factory. You will be amazed at the ease of migration and ability to scale.
more http://www.cio.com/webcast/698974/Database_Consolidation_SQL_Server_Appliance_and_Building_Your_Private_Cloud
Excel puts lots of great tools on your desktop, but what each one of them does isn’t always obvious, especially since so many Excel features are hidden.
Would you like to create multiple lines of text within a cell? There’s a keystroke for that. What if you want to reuse a chart’s formatting on another chart, or print multiple worksheets on a single sheet of paper? Those aren’t the only timesaving tools at your fingertips. Here’s how to find and use them to work smarter in Excel.
more http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/248735/work_faster_in_microsoft_excel_10_secret_tricks.html
Microsoft SQL Server 2012, the next-generation Microsoft relational database formerly referred to as “Denali” and currently available as a Release Candidate is scheduled for general release sometime during the first half of this year. To help database professionals better prepare for the new release, QuickStart Intelligence, the largest Microsoft Gold Learning Partner in the western United States, has introduced a series of two new SQL Server 2012 Courses and three Advanced SQL Server Coursescovering the key aspects of implementation, utilization and support from data warehouse implementation to modeling and reporting, analysis and integration.
Speaking at an October meeting of the Professional Association for SQL Server, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Ted Kummert stated that, “The next frontier is all about uniting the power of the cloud with the power of data to gain insights that simply weren’t possible even just a few years ago. Microsoft is committed to making this possible for every organization, and it begins with SQL Server 2012.”
more http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/1/prweb9130431.htm
SQL Server 2012, the next generation of Microsoft’s relational database management system, appears to be marching closer to product release.
Microsoft is holding a "virtual launch event" for SQL Server 2012 on March 7 (those interested can register to attend here). The event will feature keynotes by Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Business Platform Division, who will discuss the company’s "data evolution vision"; and Quentin Clark, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Database Systems Group, who will spotlight some of SQL Server 2012′s new features.
more http://rcpmag.com/articles/2012/01/24/microsoft-sql-server-2012-launch-event-march.aspx
Mobile is a growing platform for BI integration, there are many out of the box BI solutions that offer some (sometimes limited) BI integration, I have yet to trial a full BI platform that has mobile OS compatibility natively integrated in its rendering engine
Business Intelligence suites are developing rapidly, and with the introduction of fancy interactivity features on Microsoft’s new Project Crescent (PowerViews), BI products are aligning very nicely with each other, and it is becoming less and less about designing reports, and more about empowering power-users and end-users to slice and dice through the data as they see fit, which makes perfect sense, considering business analysts are in the best position to “analyse” data, not IT (or even BI developers).
more http://thinknook.com/ssrs-on-mobile-phone-mobile-bi-2012-01-24/
Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) reported a mixed performance on Friday for its second quarter ending Dec. 31. Earnings were essentially flat compared with the same period last year. The company reported a profit of US$6.62 billion, or 78 cents a share, on $20.89 billion in revenue. For the same period a year ago, Microsoft reported a profit of $6.63 billion on $19.95 billion in revenue.
More worrisome, though, was the downward trend in sales of its flagship Windows operating system.
Its Windows and Windows Live division posted $4.74 billion in revenue, down 6 percent compared with a year ago. Another important cash cow for Microsoft — its Business Division, consisting of Office, Exchange, and Sharepoint — posted a mere 3 percent growth compared with a year earlier, bringing in $6.28 billion in revenue.
more http://www.technewsworld.com/story/74241.html
I recently installed SQL Server 2012 and began exploring the tabular models. At first glance, they look very similar to PowerPivot and contain much of the same functionality. In fact, both the tabular model and PowerPivot share the same engine and the DAX language.
Although on the surface they appear very similar, several notable differences exist.
The following grid lists a few of the differences between the tabular model and PowerPivot:
more http://salvoz.com/blog/2012/01/15/sql-server-2012-tabular-models-vs-powerpivot/
January 20, 2012, 9:51 AM — SQL injection attacks have been around for more than ten years, and security professionals are more than capable of protecting against them; yet 97% of data breaches worldwide are still due to an SQL injection somewhere along the line, according to Neira Jones, head of payment security for Barclaycard.
Speaking at the Infosecurity Europe Press Conference in London this week, Jones said that hackers are taking advantage of businesses with inadequate and often outdated information security practices. Citing the most recent figures from the National Fraud Authority, she said that identity fraud costs the UK more than £2.7 billion every year, and affects more than 1.8 million people.
more http://www.itworld.com/networking/243111/barclays-97-percent-data-breaches-still-due-sql-injection
Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are the top BI tool of choice. That choking sound you hear is vendors and IT people reacting viscerally when they confront this fact. Their responses include:
- Business people are averse to change; they don’t want to invest time in learning a new tool
- Business people don’t understand that BI tools such as dashboards are more powerful than spreadsheets; they’re foolish not to use them
- Spreadsheets are filled with errors
- Spreadsheets are from hell
more http://smartdatacollective.com/ricksherman/44855/bi-s-dirty-secrets-why-business-people-are-addicted-spreadsheets
Data warehousing technology has been filtering down from large companies to small lately, as businesses across the corporate landscape scramble to take advantage of business intelligence (BI) reporting and analytics. With a strong product and lower costs, Microsoft SQL Server has positioned itself as a serious contender for the midmarket data warehousing business and — increasingly — the data warehousing market as a whole, analysts say.
more http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/news/2240114117/Cost-proliferation-power-rise-of-SQL-Server-data-warehousing
Is your organization suffering from database sprawl? Do you have too many disparate servers and too little insight into their efficiency? Would you like to find a way to consolidate your resources into a more manageable, efficient and agile datacenter? Data growth has driven server growth and with it management headaches and increased costs to manage data. HP and Microsoft have created industry leading appliance solution to address enterprise customer data management demands, while also reducing costs and bringing you the benefit of a private cloud. The solution is complete, optimized and ready from the factory. You will be amazed at the ease of migration and ability to scale.
