STOP! Before throwing more random features into SQL BI, lay out strategic guidance

[philo1]

Reporting Services, Analysis Services, PowerPivot, PowerView, PerformancePoint, Report Builder, Excel Services, Analytic Charts, Datazen... Microsoft's BI toolkit is a mess. Anyone who's starting out fresh could go insane trying to figure out what to use when. Add in Microsoft's tendency to randomly abandon technology and something packaged and stable like Microstrategy or Tableau starts to look like it's worth the money. You folks need to put your pencils down, step back, take a deep breath, and FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HECK YOU'RE DOING. Lay out an architecture, roles, and roadmap that can be published for all of us so we know where to spend our time and that SQL 2018 won't dump PowerView for some other shiny flavor of the month.

[philo1]

Heh. I'm on the PowerBI page and I forgot to add PowerBI to my list because it's YET ANOTHER technology.

[rick_bergfalk]

I'd like to just share that I feel this too. I don't know how this all fits together and if I'm having a hard time grasping this stuff as a BI professional, how can I expect the end users I'd be supporting to get it?

[huq_sami1]

Hahaha well said..

[fbcideas_migusr]

Agreed. More than too many tools is the fact that the end user has to access different places to get the BI experience. For Reporting (SSRS, Excel), for Dashboarding (POwerView, Excel, Analytics Charts, PerformancePOint), for data exploration (Excel, POwerView, POwer Bi). It's import to have one portal for everything, instead of a bunch of places to get similar as well as different things.

[colin4]

I agree, MS seems to be confused between Reporting, analytics and trending in the presentation tier Reporting should be, what happened where and when Analytics should be, show me the big picture, drill into details, identify patterns Trending should be, Statistical analysis,predictions,forecasting Visualisation security and audit should be standard across all three.

[sriyono_basuki]

Agree, I already implement BI solution using OBIEE and Microsoft BI (pwerformance point, Power View in sharepoint, Reporting Server, SSAS, Excel Power BI (Power Pivot, Power Query, Power Map), datazen). Microsoft BI solution on-premise is old-school, we have many issues using it for catch up user requirement specially in interactive dashboard. Should be manage user priviledge on SSAS, Reporting service and sharepoint in report/dashboard publish in sharepoint. I think microsoft know it and start focus on power bi, I already try it and happy using it. But still if we compare to others tools like Tableau, power bi still need more enhancement specially in User Experience (UX).