Microsoft PowerPivot: Making Excel Analytics Work

PowerPivot is Microsoft's new self-service business intelligence (BI) product that seeks to make peace between IT and Excel users. PowerPivot is a component of SQL Server 2008 R2 that works with Excel 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010. It tries to do the heretofore unachievable: Provide power users with real BI capabilities that harness the data-analysis functionality of Excel, without the dangers and control issues that are normally part of the equation.

In the realm of IT, the use of Excel as a data-analysis tool is a near certainty. No matter how much IT -- and, indeed, BI -- professionals wish this phenomenon would go away, the reality is that it probably never will. Yes, data management in a spreadsheet carries with it inefficiencies and risk, but users are comfortable with Excel.

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