SQL Server Team Announces PowerPivot for Excel

The SQL Server team has announced that Project Gemini has been named Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel 2010. The announcement was made at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas.

PowerPivot for Excel is a data analysis tool that delivers unmatched computational power directly within the application users already know and love—Microsoft Excel. Leveraging familiar Excel features, users can transform enormous quantities of data from virtually any source with incredible speed into meaningful information to get the answers they need in seconds.

Using SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010 (delivered thru SQL Server 2008 R2 in SharePoint 2010), end users can effortlessly and securely share their finding with others and work seamlessly in the browser with the same performance and features as the Excel client. PowerPivot for SharePoint even helps IT departments improve their operational efficiencies through SharePoint-based management tool called PowerPivot Management Dashboard. IT administrators can track usage patterns over time, drill down to obtain more details, discover mission-critical solutions, and ensure performance by making sure users have the appropriate resources.

You can sign up to be notified about the upcoming PowerPivot Technology Preview at www.powerpivot.com.

About PowerPivot

PowerPivot has two distinct components. A client add-in to Excel 2010 called SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel and a server component delivered thru SQL Server 2008 R2 to SharePoint 2010 called SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint.

PowerPivot for Excel enhances self-service BI capabilities by providing you with greater flexibility of data manipulation using any size data set in structured or unstructured form using the familiar Office interface thru Microsoft Excel 2010. In addition, you can publish your analysis in SharePoint 2010 as a web application and share it with insights with your co-workers.

“Managed Self Service BI” means that IT also benefits greatly with PowerPivot for SharePoint. IT Pros can provision reports – thus providing a single version of truth – and have end users work directly with data from those reports via Data Feeds. In addition, IT can track the usage of PowerPivot applications and discover mission-critical Excel applications.

PowerPivot for Excel only works with Excel 2010.

PowerPivot for SharePoint will require SQL Server 2008 R2 and SharePoint 2010.

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation