Microsoft BI tops Gartner 2008 BI Platforms list

Many a times we have customers coming in during architectural design session and strategy briefings questioning the capabilities of Microsofts BI stack, and often time they would have done some internal investigation on the other BI platforms and would cite examples of how other platforms have been rated better by leading market analysts like Gartner, IDC, Forester etc. From a TOC point of view the MS BI stack wins hands down but the question has always been on the ability to execute successfully on the MS BI stack – Gartner in the 2008 BI platform has ranked Microsofts BI on top of other vendor products. Microsofts already had a robust data warehousing strategy with the SQL Server stack but now has a compelling case for analytics with the integration of Performance Point Server (PPS) 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS).

Microsofts ability to take a specialized product and commoditize it by providing it at a very low cost is nothing new, it has been doing so in the past and appears to have got it going for BI, recent consolidation of top raking BI vendors such as Business Objects -> SAP and Cognos -> IBM is the reaction to the onslaught of the MS BI juggernaut.

When Microsoft releases SQL Server 2008 it should provide improved BI capabilities to an already compelling BI platform. All said and done the MS BI stack does provide a robust and scalable BI platform however in our experience we have seen two limitations in the current MS BI stack
- The SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), Microsofts ETL product though definitely an improvement over its predecessor DTS still is cumbersome and difficult to implement compared to other products in the market like Business Objects Data Integrator and Informatica.
- Performance Point Server 2007 currently is suitable only for Intranet BI scenarios its possibly not the best choice for hosted BI scenario. Microsoft has not done a good job of integrating the procured ProClarity product into PPS.

Hopefully the next version of the BI products would fix the above limitations.