Improved Dashboards, Reports from SharePoint

Corporate performance management, reporting, data analysis, and other business intelligence (BI) functions are noticeably improved in SharePoint Server 2010. BI technologies aim to help users make better decisions and spot problems early by analyzing data gathered from applications used to manage the business day-to-day. SharePoint could simplify BI with a single authoritative set of tools for users and a single infrastructure for managing those tools and connecting them to data. However, overlapping technologies make it difficult to choose the right platform for long-lived solutions.

SharePoint for Business Intelligence

SharePoint 2010, like earlier versions, includes features for designing and hosting Web-based reports and data analysis tools such as spreadsheet models. Microsoft’s key BI product is SQL Server, which can extract, summarize, and analyze large volumes of data from a variety of sources (including non-Microsoft databases) and generate reports. However, Microsoft has been promoting SharePoint as its primary delivery vehicle for the end products of analysis from SQL Server and other sources: a single, authoritative place for users to access reports, spreadsheets, and other analysis tools, and a single infrastructure for IT to manage and update those tools.