Gartner's Business Intelligence Top Ranking -- Microsoft Business Intelligence

With web 2.0 and other complicated data structure issues entering in to today's market place, it is almost impossible to not have some type of business intelligence system in place with customized dashboards to see the status of affairs with a few clicks. If you have not seen what business intelligence software looks like, here's a link to the Microsoft site. I have had some exposure here and one of the keys that makes it easy to use is the user created Excel spreadsheet format with Excel Services and it integrates well with Microsoft Office, Share Point and SQL Server.....something that many are already familiar with...beneficial for any hospital environment and works with with CRM (customer relations software). Not inexpensive, but will more than likely have a fairly short term for an ROI. BD

Business Objects and Cognos have long been considered the leaders in business intelligence platforms. But in a surprising new report, Gartner ranks Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) ahead of those companies in its ability to execute. Gartner defines BI platforms as those that enable users to build applications that help organizations learn and understand their business. It divides these capabilities into the functions of integration, information delivery, and analysis.
Business Objects, Cognos, and Microsoft were placed among the leaders in Gartner's just-released Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2008. But the research firm placed Microsoft above the other two in its ability to execute, including the competitiveness and success of its BI goods and services, its viability and investment in BI, and the execution of its sales and pricing. In last year's BI platform report, Gartner put Microsoft in the challenger quadrant.
They also wrote that customers cite Microsoft for having the "best BI software quality of all the mega-vendors, with over half of them reporting no problems with the software," and attribute this quality, in part, to much of its technology having been internally developed rather than acquired.
Excel Services offers a new component that enables the publication of analyses and insights gained in Excel. With Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, users can publish to the Web, your extranet, or intranet. This level of integration and trusted pathways helps maintain the integrity of your data source and ensures that the data is consistent.