Available via MSDN

Apr 21, 2010 12:37 GMT  ·  By

The promise from Microsoft is that the SQL Server PowerPivot technology is capable of helping companies get a new perspective over business data. In this regard, PowerPivot might just prove critical to the evolution of Business Intelligence in the context of IT infrastructures featuring key Microsoft technologies. The Redmond company is going to great lengths to ensure that customers will be able to benefit from PowerPivot, and it is even offering a free resource designed to streamline its adoption.

The Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot Planning and Deployment can now be accessed on MSDN. “The SQL Server and Office beta programs worked to understand the difficulties and issues customers had faced from usability to installation. We had even worked with a number of highly qualified SharePoint Rangers whom had difficulties installing and maintaining PowerPivot! (…) This paper contains architecture and design information, hardware requirements, topologies, PowerPivot / SharePoint service associations, storage requirements, and deployment planning,” Denny Lee, SQL Server Customer Advisory Team, revealed.

The PowerPivot for Excel 2010 add-in needs to be deployed on Office 2010 workstations, in combination with PowerPivot for SharePoint on SharePoint application servers. In this regard, actually taking advantage of BI data from PowerPivot means that companies will need to do some preparation work, across different systems running SharePoint, Office, and SQL Server 2008 R2. Believe it or not, installing PowerPivot, as well as maintaining the technology across all the underlying services are no easy tasks. The SQL Server PowerPivot Planning and Deployment whitepaper is bound to come in handy to the IT Professional or Database Administrator required to deploy the add-in.

“PowerPivot is an amazing new Self-Service BI tool spanning Excel, SharePoint, and SQL Server 2008 R2. The Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot Planning and Deployment will help prepare you for the new and different concepts for a successful PowerPivot deployment,” Lee added.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 - PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010 - November Community Technology Preview (CTP) is available for download here.