SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch, Neuss, Germany

The next seminar on the schedule this year was the SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch in Neuss, Germany. A couple of hours driving from Utrecht but it was worth it. Key speaker was Donald Farmer,Principal Program Manager for Microsoft SQL Server.

He spoke almost the whole day(at least it appeared to me)and he had the following sessions:
* SQL Server 2008 R2 and the evolution og business Intelligence.
* Making Decisions - How Knowledge workers transform their role with Business Intelligence.
* Supporting Decisions - How IT Pros transform the game with Business Intelligence.

Well, what was my impression of this day. A couple of things: At the informatica seminar i didn't get a good understanding of the role of the datawarehouse in the future. Today with Donald i got the feeling that there are different kind of BI solutions, and it's called managed BI. This means that the Poweruser will get more tools (powerpivot, report builder) and functionality to do things and develop (a sort of prototyping).

When things are getting to strategic in this development, the datawarehouse (or BI) comes in. The solution becomes integrated into the mainstream of the organization (cq datawarehouse). So that will be role of BI, not developing or exploring BI solutions, but aiding the poweruser and integrating this in a standardized manner.

When will it be integrated into the standardized BI solution platform? Well, there are three things playing a role here. It needs to be standardized because of critical impact of the solution for the organization. Because it needs to scalable and because the skills for further development.

As Informatica (blog) spoke yeserday about real time, i didn't hear nothing today about real time processing. So that's curieus to me.

Greetz,
Hennie