The Modern Reporting Pipeline

Modern reporting systems consume data and information from many sources, including relational databases attached to line-of-business systems as well as from social media, user clickstream data, IoT devices, and B2B data feeds. This diagram shows a simple, idealized topology; most enterprise deployments will be more complex.

 

Typically, each type of data is stored and/or processed in data-specific ways prior to be transferred to the reporting component (in this case, Power BI). For example, social media information such as tweets are captured and analyzed using a number of Azure features, thus providing a view into users’ or customers’ sentiment about the organization and/or its products.

 

Similarly, IoT data from manufacturing systems can be fed into forecasting systems (for example, MRP) which can automatically reorder raw materials or parts.

 

Executives should understand that building the integrations across disparate systems can be a time-consuming activity requiring significant expertise. For more information, see the report “Executive Focus: Data Integration in the Microsoft Cloud” on page 23 of the Nov. 2021 Update.