Inside Microsoft Business Intelligence

Your Report Development Manager – First Impressions

Patrick Husting — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:34:00 GMT

Does this look like your report development manager? If so, you probably have a pretty poor business intelligence solution. There are a lot of great tools available, but if you do not have a good strategy, you will end up looking like this guy. Call us, we can help....(read more)

State of Illinois and their financial issues - InfoGraphic

Patrick Husting — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:57:00 GMT

Pulled this from the Chicago Tribune. This information graphic points out the financial issues the state of Illinois is in. What really needs to be added to this graphic is a percent of budget. Then you would have a clear pictures of the budget and the shortfall is. When you look at the proposed cut in education, it is a big number, but what is it as a percent of the total budget. Makes things look misleading… http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/elections/ct-met-0310...(read more)

Mobile Browser Market Share

Patrick Husting — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:46:00 GMT

Great visual on the market share by mobile internet browsers. http://connect.icrossing.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/mobile-market-share.gif ...(read more)

The Size of the Mobile Market

Patrick Husting — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:33:00 GMT

Great infographic on the mobile business opportunities. Are you working on mobile solutions?! http://dataviz.tumblr.com/post/433636552...(read more)

Tracking the Nation’s Bank Failures InfoGraphic

Patrick Husting — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:36:00 GMT

This is an excellent example of using maps and animation to get the point across on bank failures over time. Look at Washington Mutual up here in the Northwest. Crazy. I still believe JP Chase stole WAMU for the price… http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/info-Failed_Banks-sort.html...(read more)

Android App Store Is 57% Free Compared to Apple's 25%

Patrick Husting — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:33:00 GMT

Great analytical charts can tell an interesting story. Check out this article from Gizmodo on Free vs Paid applications from the mobile OS providers. Using the brand icons to represent the company is a great idea. http://gizmodo.com/5479298/android-app-store-is-57-free-compared-to-apples-25 ...(read more)

Business Advice From Van Halen

Patrick Husting — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:30:53 GMT

David Lee Roth should be the new CFO at Microsoft or really any major company these days. Read this article on how he used a little statement inside their contracts to determine if the vendor they hired actually read the contract. Just awesome… http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/143/made-to-stick-the-telltale-brown-mampm.html “In other words, Roth was no diva. He was an operations expert. He couldn't spend hours every night checking the amperage of each socket. He needed a...(read more)

The BLOG is BACK!

Patrick Husting — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:48:23 GMT

Well, my ISP decided a couple weeks ago to migrate the server that our blog was on to a new hosting platform. Well, we all know what will happen, right?! Yep, we went offline for over 10 days. Kills me! The ISP was absolutely no help in resolving the issues they caused. Their offshore support was a joke. So we took matters in our own hands and moved away from that ISP. They will NEVER get another dime from me. To bad, I was a loyal customer for...(read more)

Investment Return Assumptions - Pensions and Benefits

Patrick Husting — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:00:48 GMT

Found this view today showing state pensions investment returns needed to be able to cover obligations. Boy, wouldn’t it be great to get these kinds of returns on your investments? I doubt they are actually getting them after the last several years, but I really like how they presented the business intelligence in this report. Excellent....(read more)

Waste Management and Recycling InfoGraphic

Patrick Husting — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:11:00 GMT

This is a great example of using InfoGraphics to present information more clearer. PDF: UNEP GEO Data Portal -- Basic Facts Posters - Waste Management...(read more)

Great Infographic of what a Trillion dollars looks like

Patrick Husting — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:03:00 GMT

This is a wonderful infrographic that visually displays what a trillion dollars actually looks like. A trillion here and a trillion there doesnâ€™t sound all that bad. But if you put it into the following visual perspective, you get a real understand the issues with the United States liability. Anyway, great business intelligence. But is anyone really watching?...(read more)

Kerberos SPN Generation / Setup Tool

Patrick Husting — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:19:00 GMT

My friend Robert has come up with some tools to help with Kerberos setup. Check them out at http://robertlambrecht.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!1738EAC7F6359C6D!2309.entry?sa=604119460 ...(read more)

Microsoft BI Conference â€“ June 7 - 10

Patrick Husting — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:38:00 GMT

Weâ€™ll be there, will you?...(read more)

Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2010 - Recap

Patrick Husting — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:59:00 GMT

More from Bruno at the Gartner BI Summit. ...(read more)

824,000 Will Disappear On February 5 â€“ Nice chart!

Patrick Husting — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:54:00 GMT

Well, our government really needs a good business intelligence solution since they found that over 800,000 jobs were miss reported over the past year. But, I have to admit, they have a nice bar chart reflecting the job loses and the correctionâ€¦ What is sad about this, this is data from over a YEAR ago? Wait until they find the last 9 months of data to be out of syncâ€¦ HEY WHITEHOUSE, we can help you with your business intelligence data issues! :o) http://www.bloomberg.com...(read more)

Business Intelligence in 2020

Patrick Husting — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:56:00 GMT

Bruno Aziza did a video of business intelligence in the next 10 years. Pretty good watch, but he didnâ€™t ask me. :o) ...(read more)

Excel 2010 Sparklines

Patrick Husting — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:04:00 GMT

Another video on how to add SparkLines to your spreadsheets in Excel 2010. But we need better music in the video guys! ...(read more)

How Will We Make Decisions in the Future?

Patrick Husting — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:55:11 GMT

from my buddy Bruno Aziza at Microsoft. How will we make decisions in the future? Bruno Aziza, Worldwide Lead Strategist for Microsoftâ€™s Business Intelligence group culled the wisdom of the crowd to help him peer into the future. A little less than a month ago, I asked people via multiple networks and forums what they thought business intelligence would look like in 2020. I received some great predictions and Iâ€™ll be talking about them this week at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit...(read more)

Microsoft Business Intelligence: Excel 2010 Slicers

Patrick Husting — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:03:00 GMT

Found this video on Excel Slicer, pretty good stuff. Love the musicâ€¦ :o)...(read more)

Microsoft Business Intelligence at the National Retail Federation Conference Video

Patrick Husting — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:48:00 GMT

I was presenting in the Microsoft booth on business intelligence. Here is a video from the event,...(read more)

Business Intelligence in the Apple iPad

Patrick Husting — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:12:07 GMT

Apple launched the iPad today and also has a new version if iWork too. Check out the nice presentation on the spreadsheet below. Love good UI design for BI. ...(read more)

ClustrMaps for insidemsftbi.com blog

Patrick Husting — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:32:00 GMT

I just love maps with an analytics layer. Here are all the visitors around the world checking out our blog. I think some of the dots out in the middle of the oceans are the most intriguing. ...(read more)

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Patrick Husting — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:49:06 GMT

Yeah, I know, this has nothing to do with Microsoft Business Intelligence, but it is a great example of being creative when trying to tell a story and using analytics to drive the issue home. I still wish I had a BI tool do this kind of stuff. I would be a hero! :o) large image can be found here...(read more)

Extended Results is 4 years old!

Patrick Husting — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:51:00 GMT

I started Extended Results in January 2006 with the mission of doing business intelligence projects they way we think it should be done. Focused on customer needs for performance management and to get the most out of their investments. We are now over 40 people and continuing to hire as our customer base grows. It has been pretty exciting to be working with so many talented people in the business intelligence industry. Happy Birthday Extended Results, Inc. 4 years old!...(read more)

Reactive, Silverlight, and Web Services (Oh my!)

mjwilson — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:41:00 GMT

OR: A simple example of how to use the Reactive Extensions with Silverlight to process responses from web services. One of the most useful tools that I have stumbled across in recent months has to be the Reactive Extensions (Rx) put out by Microsoft Labs. There are smarter people than me out there who have done a much better job of explaining WHAT Rx is (check a couple links in the Additional Reading section), so I wonâ€™t be stepping over into that realm, but rather I will be breaking down one way...(read more)