Microsoft Power View: Delivering Self-Service Reporting and Data Exploration

In my last post I provided an overview of PowerPivot. I’d like to build upon the discussion in this post with a focus on Microsoft’s self-service business intelligence (BI) capabilities using Power View. You’ll see how to bring your data to life through rich visualization and interactivity.

Visualizing Our Data

Power View is the last step in our self-service BI solution exposing the tabular data model that we built in PowerPivot. It provides a visually rich, interactive reporting and data exploration experience through an incredibly simple to use interface. Through its drag and drop style of report building Power View was designed to truly bring BI to the masses. It allows anyone in an organization to quickly learn how to use the tool in order to create reports and visualize the data however they prefer in order to derive business insights. Learning from past experiences with Report Builder, Microsoft’s goal for Power View was to allow for quick and easy creation of powerful reports without overwhelming end users with too much complexity.

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Using IBM Social Media Analytics to Improve Your Business

Social Media is an undeniable part of everyday life. With the pervasiveness of mobile devices, social media is available anywhere at pretty much any time. Here are just a few figures that highlight and give a sense of scale of current Social Media usage:

By now, most organizations are listening to the different social media outlets for information relevant to them. Listening is a good starting point for deriving meaningful, actionable insights from social media, but it is not enough. Organizations need a way to move beyond listening so they can collaboratively solve business problems. Read More »

5 Ways to Future-Proof Your Data Center for Big Data

While some may think that Big Data is all hype and may go away after the next big thing comes along; they are probably not looking at the big picture.  The reality is that the term Big Data really translates to analytics; information that helps you make better day-to-day decisions and ultimately keeps you competitive in a fast-paced business world.  And the truth is, we can all use that in almost every industry today. Read More »