BI in Microsoft Applications

Over time, Microsoft’s own applications have steadily increased their adoption and use of the SQL Server BI platform over built-in, proprietary (or third-party) analysis and reporting systems. Among the most notable:

Project Server 2007, the core of Microsoft’s most recent enterprise product management offering, provides a cube building service that uses a graphical user interface and Analysis Services to help project managers and business analysts build detailed multidimensional reports. Reports enable analysis of task, resource, project, and assignment data, which can help workers spot and manage project issues and risks.

Dynamics ERP applications each provide (or will soon provide) some support for the Microsoft BI platform. For example, users of AX 4.0, the company’s high-end ERP application, can use Reporting Services features such as Report Builder for report design. In previous versions, report design required Axapta’s proprietary development tool (the MorphX development environment) and programming language (X++). In addition, GP 10.0 (which shipped in June 2007) provides 75 reports for Reporting Services compared with fewer than 10 in GP 9.0. Future Dynamics ERP releases will increase their use of the SQL Server BI platform and concurrently phase out their built-in, proprietary BI tools.