E-mail by Andrew Brust
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All,

Many of you know that Business Intelligence (BI) has long been a passion of mine, ever since the release of SQL Server 7 and its OLAP Services (now Analysis Services) component. With the growing number of BI features in Office and SharePoint, including the new PowerPivot self-service BI engine, Microsoft BI is now hitting a point of true resonance in the MS ecosystem. The challenge is that the MS BI stack is scattered over several products, including SQL Server, Office and SharePoint. This means information, events and support around the MS BI stack are scattered as well, creating certain barriers to successful and enjoyable adoption.

With that in mind, and with the support of others in the NYC-area Microsoft user group community, I have decided to launch a new user group focused on Microsoft BI; nothing more and nothing less. This group’s monthly meetings will feature subjects that include deep dives on the Microsoft BI Stack’s component products, the developer story around them, third party products, and how to integrate Microsoft BI tools with other Business Intelligence platforms.

The group will meet the 2nd Monday of each month, at Microsoft’s NYC offices at 1290 Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue). Our first meeting will be in less than three weeks, on Monday, September 13th. Our Web site is under construction but should be up within one week. For now, please simply register at the following URL:
https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=150469

We have a great speaker and topic lined up! It features an introduction to the entire MS BI Stack, and is a terrific talk for our inaugural meeting. Here are the details:


Introduction to the Microsoft Business Intelligence Stack

This demonstration will provide a whirlwind tour of the major components of the Microsoft BI stack. Borrowing from the “begin with the end in mind” approach, We’ll kick things off with an end result: a SharePoint 2010 multi-page dashboard consisting of different business scorecards and integrated reports/charts for summary/detailed analytics.

From there, the presentation will step backwards and trace the formative steps towards the end goal, and how developers can use the different products in the Microsoft BI stack (Integration Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, PowerPivot, and PerformancePoint Services), to build solutions for ultimate deployment to SharePoint.

Attendees will come away with some exposure of what each tool in the BI stack can do, and how the tools can be made to work together.


Speaker: Kevin S. Goff
Kevin is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP, a Columnist for Component Developer (CoDe) Magazine, a SQL Server/Business Intelligence Senior Trainer and Curriculum author at SetFocus LLC and has been an Industry developer, speaker and writer since 1987