New Capabilities, New Opportunities

The business intelligence tools in SQL Server 2005 offer us tremendous new capabilities. We can now create powerful analysis tools to provide business intelligence to decision makers at every level of our organizations. We can define, construct, deploy, and analyze with greater speed and efficiency than ever before. The complexity that made data warehousing, data mining, enterprise-wide reporting, and the integration of those items with line-of-business applications a lengthy, expensive, and risky venture has been reduced, if not eliminated.

The reputation of business intelligence projects as not worth the time, money, and headaches involved is widespread and deeply ingrained. Too many times, business intelligence projects delivered less than expected in a less-effective manner than anticipated over a longer timeline than allowed for more money than budgeted. Most small and mid-size organizations would never dream of creating a data mart, or using OLAP cubes or data mining. Yet, these are the same organizations that stand to benefit the most from what SQL Server 2005 has to offer. A number of large organizations have been down the business intelligence road with huge, all-encompassing projects that ended up failing miserably. With SQL Server 2005, these large organizations can implement business intelligence with an incremental approach that leads to a much higher success rate.

Those of us working with business intelligence in SQL Server 2005 have a job ahead of us. We need to let organizations of all sizes know that the tools, the architecture, and, indeed, the rules of business intelligence are changing. SQL Server 2005 allows for a new, iterative approach and less of the all-or-nothing approach to business intelligence projects. With SQL Server 2005, it is possible to get more than you expected in a more effective manner than anticipated requiring a shorter timeline than allowed for less money than budgeted.

Those organizations that hear this message can reap the rewards offered by the business intelligence tools in SQL Server 2005 and the strategic advantages that go along with them. They can efficiently create tools to achieve effective decision making!