style="margin-top:70px;" Clickstream

Clickstream

     
Microsoft Office as Part of the BI Tool Layer

Excel ScreenEvery organizations uses spreadsheets to produce or present numbers, with the most popular being (of course) Excel. This is a fact of life and it's nice to see the BI vendors are finally realizing that part of their role is to provide a conduit for information, even if it means they don't own the final presentation layer.

I've been looking at a few to see how they work, and how well they do or don't hide the underlying data warehouse infrastructure. The latest releases are doing a much better job of this.

Instead of exporting to Excel or copying and pasting charts into Powerpoint, the integration now works fairly well. You can set the data to auto-refresh when you open a presentation, or tie a report into a tracking spreadsheet and refresh the numbers monthly. No more pasting data and moving formulas around manually to do the job.

The two that I've looked at a little more closely, since I use one and I'm considering the other, are Microstrategy Office and Business Objects Live Office. The thumbnail link to the screenshot (above) is for Microstrategy, showing the pull-down menu for reporting within Excel.

When Business Objects unveiled this at their annual conference, it highlighted some of the complexity behind the scenes. When Bernard Liautaud (the CEO) did a demo with Powerpoint he talked too long and the connection to the BI server timed out. Because you still have to maintain the login information in the BI environment, it's not a seamless integration to the user. They are still required to log in to the BI tool when getting data via Excel. If you email that spreadsheet to someone who isn't in the system, they can't refresh the data and in some odd edge cases, can't view the data that's already there.

Applaud the CEO who demos beta code at a conference. He was zero for three at this one. After the login timeout and a bug, he showed the new dashboard software. It's so easy an executive like Bernard can pull metrics and set up the format desired with a few clicks and drags! It was only a few clicks and drags, but this is web-deployed. Whoever designed the software disabled the back button in the browser and didn't provide any links off that page. It was like watching a mastodon sink into a tar pit.

More executives should demo their companies' products.

Comments:
Microstrategy can do a few things in the web version that WebIntelligence can't until XI release 2.

On the plus side, Business Objects doesn't try to screw their customers.
 
Post a Comment

Home

Data warehousing, business intelligence, IT strategy and architecture, and occasional interesting bits.


Subscribe to XML feed


Bio / About Me

email me

Check out my book

Clickstream data warehousing book cover Buy clickstream data warehousing from Amazon.com

Search this site or  the web



Site search   Web search
powered by FreeFind
Popular Posts
Primate programming.
Why development in crunch mode doesn't work.
Enterprise data modeling sucks big rocks.
XP Exaggerated.
Ping-pong in the matrix.
Time management for anarchists.
Is Ab Initio worth evaluating?
Job posting: omniscient architect.
Why hiring more sales people won't grow revenues faster.
Some resources for Open Source CMS.

Reading List
Quicksilver
The Cruise of the Snark
Blue Latitudes
Everyone in Silico
The Klamath Knot
Swarm Intelligence (Bonabeau)
A three year backlog of F&SF

Listening List
Toots and the Maytals
The Buena Vista Social Club
American Idiot

Watching List
Winged Migration Quicktime trailer
Ghengis Blues
Howl's Moving Castls
Hero
A Bronx Tale

Blogroll
Daily KOS
Due Diligence
Boing Boing
Kevin Kelly (Recomendo)
Not Geniuses
3 Quarks Daily
Futurismic
Fafblog
Kottke.org

Miscellany
War in Context
Salon.com
Valmiki's Ramayana
Choose the Blue
Third Nature
Mark Madsen
The Data Warehouse Institute
James Howard Kunstler
WorldChanging
/.
Clickstream Data Warehousing
Technorati Profile

Archives
04/01/2003 - 05/01/2003 05/01/2003 - 06/01/2003 06/01/2003 - 07/01/2003 07/01/2003 - 08/01/2003 08/01/2003 - 09/01/2003 09/01/2003 - 10/01/2003 10/01/2003 - 11/01/2003 11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003 12/01/2003 - 01/01/2004 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004 06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004 07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004 09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004 10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004 11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004 12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005 01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005 03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005 05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005 06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005 07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005 08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005 09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005 10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005 11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005 12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006 05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006 06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006 07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006 08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006 10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006 01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007 02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007 03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007 04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007 05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007 06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007 07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007 08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007 09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007 10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007 11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007 12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008 01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008 02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008 03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008 08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008 06/01/2009 - 07/01/2009 08/01/2009 - 09/01/2009 10/01/2009 - 11/01/2009 01/01/2010 - 02/01/2010 09/01/2011 - 10/01/2011 04/01/2013 - 05/01/2013

email me

Powered by Blogger.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under this Creative Commons License except where indicated.